Accounting & Bookkeeping Services
Bookkeeping is the day-to-day recording of a business's sales, purchases, payments and dues;
accounting is the checking, classifying and reporting that sits on top of those records.
LegalDev delivers both as one monthly online service for Indian businesses, run on Tally, Zoho
Books or QuickBooks.
Quick answer: Accounting and bookkeeping services record every sale, purchase
and payment in your business, reconcile them against bank statements, and turn them into profit
and loss, balance sheet and GST-ready reports. In India, outsourced plans typically run from
about ₹1,500 to ₹25,000 a month, depending on transaction volume and scope.
Typical Plan Range
₹1,500 to ₹25,000 a Month
Monthly Reports Shared By
The 10th
LegalDev Plans Start At
₹1,499 a Month
What Are Accounting & Bookkeeping Services?
Bookkeeping is the record. Every invoice you raise, every bill you pay and every rupee that
enters or leaves a bank account gets entered once, in the right place, with the proof attached.
Accounting is the judgement applied to that record: deciding which spend is a capital purchase
and which is a running cost, matching the bank's version of events against yours, working out
GST payable against the credit available, and producing a profit and loss statement and balance
sheet that a lender or tax officer will accept.
A professional service does the work in a fixed order:
1
Record
Sales, purchases, receipts, payments and journal entries go into the books from
invoices, bills and bank statements.
2
Reconcile
Bank, card, payment-gateway, customer, vendor and GST balances are matched against their
outside sources, and every difference is explained or corrected.
3
Report
Monthly statements show profit, position and cash, and the year-end set goes to your
auditor or tax filer.
4
Support
Someone answers the questions that come up between months: why a vendor balance looks
wrong, whether a bill's GST can be claimed, what to pay before the 20th.
The labels attached to these services confuse buyers, so here is what each one actually
describes:
Online means documents travel digitally, by secure drive or
WhatsApp, and nobody visits your office.
Cloud describes where the books sit: in software such as Zoho
Books or QuickBooks Online that you and your accountant can both open.
Virtual means the accountant works remotely instead of sitting at
a desk in your premises.
Outsourced means the team is outside your payroll and you pay by
plan or retainer.
A good provider is all four at once. The distinctions matter mainly when you compare quotes,
because a "virtual bookkeeping" price and an "outsourced accounting" price may cover quite
different amounts of work.
On method: companies and LLPs must keep books on the double-entry system. Small proprietors
below the legal thresholds can legally get by with a cash book and a few registers, but a lender
asking for a balance sheet will want double-entry records, so most growing businesses move to
them early.
Why Does Your Business Need Accounting and Bookkeeping Services?
Because four separate laws ask for your books, and a fifth, practical reason sits behind them:
you cannot manage a business whose numbers arrive six months late.
| Who you are |
Law |
What it expects from your records |
| A company (private, public, OPC) |
Section 128, Companies Act, 2013 |
Books kept at the registered office on the accrual basis and double-entry
system, preserved for at least eight financial years
|
| An LLP |
Section 34, LLP Act, 2008 |
Proper books on cash or accrual basis, double-entry
|
| A GST-registered person |
Sections 35 and 36, CGST Act, with Rule 56 |
Prescribed accounts and records at the principal place of business, retained
until 72 months after the due date of the annual return
|
|
A business or professional above the income-tax thresholds
|
Section 62, Income-tax Act, 2025 (replaced Section 44AA from 1 April 2026)
|
Books and documents that let the tax officer compute total income
|
Two further rules catch businesses out. For financial years starting on or after 1 April 2023, a
company that keeps its books in accounting software must use software with an edit log, called
an audit trail, that cannot be switched off. ICAI's journal explains the requirement and the
auditor's reporting duty. Separately, Section 63 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (official text)
sends a business to a tax audit once turnover crosses ₹1 crore, or ₹10 crore where cash receipts
and cash payments are each within 5% of the total, and a professional once gross receipts cross
₹50 lakh. A tax audit on messy books costs more and takes longer than one on clean books.
The practical reasons are less formal but usually bite first.
Profit is not cash. Take an illustration with made-up numbers. A
trading firm raises ₹12 lakh of invoices in a month and collects ₹7 lakh. Its profit
and loss statement looks healthy, and GST on those invoices is generally payable on
the invoice basis, not when the customer pays. Rent, salaries and the GST payment on
the 20th all leave the bank account. A receivables ageing report, which exists only
if the books are current, would show that ₹5 lakh is stuck with three
customers.
Input tax credit follows your records. GST credit is claimed
against supplier invoices that appear in your GSTR-2B. If your purchase register
disagrees with it, you either lose credit or claim credit you cannot defend.
MSME vendors now affect your tax bill. Payments owed to micro and
small enterprise suppliers beyond the time limit in Section 15 of the MSMED Act (15
days without a written agreement, and never more than 45 days with one) are
deductible only when actually paid. That rule began as Section 43B(h) and, per a
Finance Ministry reply in Parliament on 21 July 2026, now sits as Section 37(2)(g)
of the 2025 Act. You can only comply if your books know which vendors are micro or
small and when each bill is due.
Lenders and investors read statements, not explanations. A bank
reviewing a working-capital loan, or an investor in due diligence, asks for
reconciled financials. Rebuilding two years of books in a hurry is the most
expensive way to produce them.
Failing to keep the prescribed books also carries a fixed penalty of ₹25,000 under income-tax
law, which is the smallest of the costs listed here.
Our Accounting & Bookkeeping Services
Everything below can be bought together as a monthly plan or in parts. The unit that sets the
price is your monthly transaction count, so each service is described with what it does, where
it goes wrong, and what you receive.
Bookkeeping Services
This is the base layer. Our team enters sales invoices, purchase bills, receipts, payments,
contra transfers (cash to bank and back) and journal adjustments into your accounting software,
and attaches or links the source document to each entry. Expenses are classified into the right
heads so that the profit and loss statement means something, and entries are mapped for GST and
TDS as they are booked, instead of being fixed at filing time.
Frequency is the main choice. Monthly bookkeeping services suit a consulting firm or agency with
a few dozen invoices and bills a month: documents come in once, books close by a fixed date,
reports follow. Daily bookkeeping services make sense where volume or cash handling is high,
such as a retail counter, a restaurant or an online seller with hundreds of orders, because
errors found the same day are cheap to fix and errors found a month later are not. If you are
not sure which you need, count the number of days a mistake can sit unseen before it hurts: for
most small businesses the answer is a month, for cash-heavy ones it is a day.
Professional bookkeeping services also cover financial record keeping in the plain sense: a
retrievable, indexed copy of every bill and statement, so that a notice or audit query two years
later takes minutes to answer.
Online Accounting Services
Online accounting services mean the whole cycle runs without a visit. You send bank statements,
invoices and bills through an encrypted drive or WhatsApp; the team enters, reconciles and
reports in cloud accounting services such as Zoho Books or QuickBooks Online, or in TallyPrime,
Busy or Marg ERP if you already use them; you receive reports and can open the books yourself at
any time.
Three things are worth checking with any provider offering online accounting services India
wide. First, who owns the software licence and the data: you should hold the admin login or a
full export, so leaving a provider never means losing your history. Second, where the books are
stored, because Indian company law has rules on electronic books (covered under "Online
Accounting & Bookkeeping Services in India" below). Third, whether the software keeps an audit
trail.
Accounts Payable and Receivable Management
Payables are what you owe. We record each vendor bill, track its due date, deduct TDS where the
payment attracts it, and prepare the payment list. The layer most businesses miss is vendor
classification: if a supplier is a micro or small enterprise, the 15 and 45 day limits described
above apply, and the ageing report needs to flag those bills before they cross the line. You can
confirm a supplier's Udyam status with our Udyam verification tool or on the government's Udyam
portal.
Receivables are what customers owe you. Accounts payable and receivable reports bucket every
open invoice by age, for example current, 1 to 30 days late, 31 to 60, 61 to 90 and older, so
the owner sees who to call this week. Ageing also tells you when an old balance should be
written off or provided for instead of sitting in the balance sheet as an asset nobody expects
to collect.
| Bucket |
What it usually means |
Typical action |
| Current |
Within agreed credit period |
Nothing |
| 1 to 30 days late |
Slow payer or missing paperwork |
Reminder with invoice copy |
| 31 to 60 days late |
Dispute or cash problem at customer |
Call, check delivery proof |
| Above 90 days |
Collection at risk |
Review credit limit, consider provision |
Bank Reconciliation
Bank reconciliation compares the balance in your books with the bank's statement and explains
every difference. It is the single most effective error check in accounting, because the bank is
an outside witness that your own entries cannot overrule.
Typical differences are cheques issued but not yet cleared, bank charges and interest not yet
entered, a customer deposit booked to the wrong party, and the same payment entered twice. For
online sellers there is a fifth: a payment gateway such as Razorpay, PayU, Stripe or Cashfree
settles a lump sum that is net of fees, GST on the fees, and sometimes TCS or TDS, and that lump
sum matches no single invoice. Our bank reconciliation services match gateway payouts back to
individual orders so that gross sales, fees and net cash each land in the correct account.
Credit-card statements get the same treatment. Done monthly, reconciliation takes a short,
routine effort; left to year-end, it becomes a forensic exercise across twelve months of memory.
Ledger Maintenance
Ledgers are the individual accounts that hold your history: one for each customer, vendor, bank
account, expense head, tax, loan and asset. Ledger maintenance means keeping them clean: one
account per party (not the same vendor under three spellings), expenses in consistent heads,
opening balances agreeing with the previous year's closing, and a trial balance that adds up.
It also covers the fixed asset register. Each asset gets a purchase date, cost, depreciation
method and rate, and the year's depreciation is calculated from that register, so the balance
sheet carries assets at a defensible value and the tax computation has the schedule it needs.
When a ledger goes wrong the symptom is usually visible long before the cause: a vendor balance
that will not agree with the vendor's own statement, a customer showing an advance and an
outstanding at the same time, or an expense head with a single enormous "miscellaneous" figure.
Invoice and Expense Management
This service handles the paper trail from both directions. On the sales side, invoice and
payment management means checking that each invoice carries the details a GST invoice needs
(GSTIN, place of supply, HSN or SAC, tax split) and that each receipt is matched to the invoice
it settles. On the purchase side, every bill is checked against your GSTR-2B and the vendor's
GST status before credit is taken.
For income and expense tracking, we separate business from personal spending, categorise
reimbursements, and keep a document for each entry. Expenses without a bill, bills without a
GSTIN, and personal payments through the business account are the three habits that most often
cause tax disallowances. Catching them monthly costs a short conversation. Catching them at
assessment costs the deduction.
GST Accounting and Bookkeeping
GST bookkeeping is the part of the books that makes returns possible: sales registers by rate
and place of supply, purchase registers with credit eligibility, reverse charge entries, credit
and debit notes, and the electronic credit and cash ledger balances. GST accounting services go
one step further and reconcile this to the portal.
Each month the cycle runs like this. Suppliers file GSTR-1 by the 11th. A draft GSTR-2B
generates on the 14th. Since October 2024 the portal's Invoice Management System lets you
accept, reject or hold each supplier invoice before the credit is final. GSTR-3B is due on the
20th for monthly filers, and on the 22nd or 24th, depending on the state, for quarterly (QRMP)
filers. From the July 2025 tax period, the sales tables of GSTR-3B are filled from GSTR-1 and
cannot be typed over, so a mistake in the sales register now shows up as a hard mismatch instead
of being quietly adjusted at filing.
Blocked credits under Section 17(5), credit that must be reversed, and invoices in a vendor's
GSTR-1 that you never received are all found at this reconciliation, not at filing. Our books
feed directly into GST return filing, which is available as its own service, and the GST health
checkup tool shows filing status and the credit ledger from the portal if you want an outside
view before a plan starts. For the legal retention period of GST records, see the records
section below.
Financial Reports and Statements
Financial reporting services turn the ledgers into a monthly package: profit and loss statement,
balance sheet, cash flow statement, and debtors and creditors ageing. Our reports are shared by
the 10th of each month, so you read last month's numbers while they can still change a decision.
Each statement answers a different question. The profit and loss says whether you earned money.
The balance sheet says what you own and owe. The cash flow statement says why the bank balance
moved. The ageing reports say who is holding your money and whom you are holding it from. A set
that includes only the first of these gives a flattering and incomplete view.
Profit & Loss Statement Preparation
A profit and loss statement lists revenue, subtracts the direct cost of what you sold to reach
gross profit, then subtracts running costs (salaries, rent, marketing, software, interest,
depreciation) to reach net profit. Done properly it is net of GST: GST collected is a liability,
not income.
Four errors distort most small-business P&Ls:
A laptop or machine booked as an expense when it is an asset to be
depreciated.
Owner's personal drawings sitting in expense heads, understating profit.
Revenue booked when cash arrives instead of when the invoice is raised, which hides
unpaid sales.
Missing year-end accruals for rent, salaries, professional fees and interest that
belong to the year but are paid later.
A month-by-month P&L also exposes seasonality that an annual figure buries, which helps with
hiring, stocking and credit decisions.
Balance Sheet Preparation
Balance sheet preparation is where reconciliation pays off. The statement lists assets (bank,
receivables, stock, equipment), liabilities (payables, loans, taxes due) and the owner's equity,
and the two sides must agree.
Before we sign off a balance sheet, we check that the bank figure matches the bank statement,
the debtors and creditors totals match their ledgers, stock agrees with a physical or system
count, loan balances match lender statements, and GST, TDS and advance-tax balances match what
the portals show. A balance sheet that has not passed these checks is a draft, whatever it is
called. Lenders, investors, the statutory auditor and the tax filer all start from this
document.
Cash Flow Management
Cash flow management asks a different question from the P&L: not "did we earn?" but "will the
bank balance cover what is due, and when?" We build a rolling forecast from three inputs:
collections expected from the receivables ageing, payments due from the payables ageing, and
fixed obligations on the calendar.
The calendar is more predictable than most owners think:
| Date |
Obligation |
| 7th |
TDS deposit for the previous month |
| 11th |
GSTR-1 due |
| 15th |
PF and ESI contributions |
| 20th |
GSTR-3B for monthly filers |
| 15 June, 15 September, 15 December, 15 March |
Advance tax instalments |
| Salary date |
Payroll, which we can run through payroll services |
TDS deposit for March falls on 30 April instead of the 7th. A forecast that puts these dates
next to expected collections shows a shortfall weeks ahead, which is the point at which a
supplier can still be asked for time or a customer chased.
Accounting & Bookkeeping Services for Small Businesses
Small business accounting services need to be sized to the business. A shop with 40 transactions
a month needs a different amount of work from a distributor with 400, and paying for the second
when you are the first wastes money.
The legal starting point is the threshold for keeping books. Under Section 44AA, which Section
62 of the 2025 Act replaced, an existing business had to keep books if income exceeded ₹2.5 lakh
or turnover exceeded ₹25 lakh in any of the three preceding years; a newly set-up business had
to if income was likely to exceed ₹1.2 lakh or turnover ₹10 lakh. Those figures carried across,
but check them against the current text of Section 62 for your year.
The presumptive scheme (Section 58 of the 2025 Act, formerly 44AD, 44ADA and 44AE) lets eligible
small taxpayers skip detailed books and the tax audit by declaring profit at a fixed percentage
of turnover. It has a trap: a taxpayer who declares a lower profit and has income above the
basic exemption limit must keep books and get audited. Many owners who "never needed books"
discover this the year a bad season makes profit fall.
Small businesses also have habits that make books go bad quickly. Cash sales are not entered
until the end of the week. The business account pays for a family purchase. One person holds the
only copy of the Tally file on one laptop. None of this is dishonest, and all of it is expensive
to untangle later.
For a small business, the useful form of accounting services for small business is modest and
regular: one place for documents, a monthly close, a bank reconciliation, a short report that
shows profit, cash and who owes you, and a person to ask. Bookkeeping services for small
business that deliver those four things are worth more than a larger package that nobody reads.
Business ITR filing then becomes a matter of using the books you already have.
If you want the same thing described for a smaller operation in a single line: small business
bookkeeping India is mostly the discipline of closing each month on time.
Accounting Services for Startups
A startup's books carry unusual items that ordinary small-business templates do not handle:
founder-paid expenses before the bank account existed, share capital and securities premium,
director loans, convertible instruments, and grants. Accounting services for startups need to
treat these properly from the first month, because they are the entries an investor's lawyer
asks about.
Bookkeeping for startups has three jobs that differ from a shop's. The first is founder
reimbursements: expenses paid personally in the first weeks should be recorded as a liability to
the founder, with bills attached, not left as untraceable personal spending. The second is
investor reporting: a monthly management report showing revenue, spending, burn (cash going out)
and runway (months of cash left) is the document funders actually read. The third is audit
readiness. Every company, however small, must have its accounts audited each year by a statutory
auditor, so books that are reconciled and supported by documents turn the audit into a routine
check instead of a rebuild.
Software choice matters sooner than founders expect. A company using accounting software must
use one with a non-disableable audit trail, which a plain spreadsheet generally cannot provide.
Moving from spreadsheets to proper software after six months of trading means re-entering
history.
Our accounting support for startups includes setting up the chart of accounts, wiring GST and
TDS mapping in, running monthly closes, and producing the statements for the annual filing. When
the structure is still undecided, the books are the same under either route; the legal and
filing differences between a company and an LLP are explained on our annual compliance page.
Online Accounting & Bookkeeping Services in India
India's tax system is already digital: GST returns are filed on a portal, TDS on another, income
tax on a third, and banks give statements as PDF or Excel. That makes remote accounting
practical, because the inputs and outputs are already electronic. What a good provider adds is
knowing how the Indian rules interact.
Several Indian features make accounting services in India harder than a generic bookkeeping
template suggests:
GST is state-specific: each GSTIN in each state files separately, and place of
supply decides whether tax is IGST or CGST plus SGST.
TDS applies to a wide set of payments (contractor, professional fees, rent,
commission, among others) at different rates, and must be deposited by the 7th of
the next month.
Marketplaces and payment gateways deduct TCS, TDS and fees before paying you, so
the amount received never equals the amount sold.
Export invoices work under a letter of undertaking and need separate
treatment.
Professional tax, PF and ESI differ by state and employee count.
The company-law side of "online" deserves care. The Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014 allow books
in electronic form, require them to stay accessible in India, and, if the software runs on
servers outside India, require a daily backup on servers located in India. The software must
keep an audit trail, and the books and the trail must be retained for the same
eight-financial-year period. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs publishes the Act and the Rules.
On the question of who does the work: bookkeeping is not a reserved activity, but tax audit
reports, certifications and statutory audits can be signed only by a Chartered Accountant. Our
CA accounting services put a qualified CA over the GST, TDS and year-end work, which is where
errors carry penalties. LegalDev offers professional accounting services India wide from offices
in Haridwar, Patna and Lucknow, and clients in other states work with us in the same way,
online.
How Our Accounting & Bookkeeping Service Works
The cycle repeats each month. The first pass takes the longest, because it sets up the structure
that later months reuse.
Share Your Business Details
We begin with a free consultation. You tell us your structure (proprietorship, partnership, LLP
or company), your GSTINs and states, the software you use or prefer, the number of bank accounts
and gateways, your rough monthly transaction count, and whether any past months are unbooked.
From that we recommend a plan size.
Documents needed at the start are bank statements for every business account, sales invoices or
marketplace reports, purchase bills and expense vouchers, payment gateway settlement reports,
and last year's audited balance sheet with the opening trial balance if one exists.
Organize and Record Financial Transactions
We set up the chart of accounts and tax rules in Zoho Books, TallyPrime, QuickBooks Online, Busy
or Marg, or in your existing file. Each month you send documents through an encrypted drive or
WhatsApp. Our accountants enter vouchers, categorise expenses, and map GST and TDS on each
entry.
The setup decisions here, such as how revenue heads are split, which expenses get their own
account, and how stock is valued, shape every report later, which is why they are made once and
documented.
Reconcile Accounts
Bank accounts, credit cards and payment gateways are reconciled to their statements. Customer
and vendor ledgers are checked against open invoices. Purchases are matched to GSTR-2B, and
differences are listed for you to resolve with the vendor or to adjust in the books.
Any entry that cannot be matched stays on a visible exceptions list. It is never left hidden in
a suspense account.
Prepare Financial Reports
The month's profit and loss statement, balance sheet, cash flow report and debtors and creditors
ageing are prepared and shared by the 10th. We walk through anything that moved sharply, since a
number you do not understand is not much use to you.
Regular Accounting Support
Between closes you can ask questions: how to treat an unusual payment, whether a bill's GST is
claimable, what a notice means. We track due dates for GST, TDS and advance tax so that payments
and filings do not slip. At year-end, we hand your auditor reconciled books, the fixed asset
register, depreciation schedules and a tax-ready trial balance, and answer queries during the
audit.
Benefits of Outsourcing Accounting & Bookkeeping
The case for outsourced accounting services rests on five things that are hard to get from one
in-house hire.
Coverage. A single accountant takes leave, falls ill and resigns.
A team does not stop. The books keep closing.
Qualified oversight where it counts. One in-house person rarely
has current knowledge of GST rules, TDS sections and company-law changes. A provider
whose CAs handle these across many clients meets the changes as they happen, such as
the shift of books of account to Section 62 in April 2026.
Cost that follows volume. An employee is a fixed monthly cost plus
software, desk and supervision, whether you have 30 transactions or 300. Plans that
scale with transaction count, like the ones in the cost section below, charge for
what you use.
Audit readiness. Books closed monthly and reconciled are close to
audit-ready all year. You avoid the March scramble.
Speed of information. Reports by the 10th let you act on last
month's numbers.
Accounting outsourcing services are not right for every business, and the trade-offs are real. A
shop that handles cash all day still needs someone on site to record it; outsourcing starts
after the cash is counted. Outsourcing depends on you sending documents on time, so a business
that cannot organise bills will get slow, costly books from anyone. And you should keep admin
access to the software and a copy of the data, so the arrangement can be reversed without drama.
A business with one or two transactions a year does not need a monthly service at all and should
ask for year-end finalisation instead.
Who Can Use Our Accounting & Bookkeeping Services?
Anyone who earns, spends and has to prove it. The details differ by type.
Startups
New companies, LLPs and partnerships with founders, early staff and possibly outside money.
Records need to be investor-readable from the first month: founder expenses documented, capital
entries correct, a monthly burn and runway view, and software with an audit trail. Details are
in the startup section above.
Small Businesses
Shops, workshops, clinics, schools and local services with up to a few hundred transactions a
month. The need is a reliable monthly close, bank reconciliation, a short report, and someone
who knows GST and TDS. The Starter plan below is sized for this.
E-commerce Businesses
Sellers on marketplaces or their own sites face high order volume, returns, multiple settlement
reports and tax deducted at source by the platform. Each settlement has to be broken into sales,
fees, taxes and net cash, and returns have to reverse the right entries. Our plan for these
sellers includes gateway and multichannel reconciliation and inventory sync. The GST for
e-commerce page covers the registration and filing rules that sit on top of the books.
Freelancers and Professionals
Consultants, designers, developers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals mostly need clean
income and expense tracking, advance tax planning, and correct handling of invoices to foreign
clients. Many choose the presumptive scheme; even then, a record of receipts and a separate
business bank account make filing faster and protect against the audit trap noted earlier.
Traders and Retail Businesses
Buying and selling goods puts stock at the centre of the books. Purchases, sales, returns and
closing stock together decide gross margin, and an error in any of them carries into profit.
Daily bookkeeping is often the better fit here, with periodic stock counts matched to the stock
ledger.
Service-Based Businesses
Agencies, IT firms and consultancies bill monthly, by project or on retainer, and clients
usually deduct TDS before paying. The books need to reconcile customer receipts to invoices net
of TDS, and TDS credit to what appears in Form 26AS or AIS, because credit that does not match
gets lost at filing. Project-wise profitability reports are the other common request.
Companies and LLPs
Incorporated entities have statutory duties on top of ordinary bookkeeping: audit-trail
software, an annual statutory audit for companies, and annual filings built from the books. For
companies those are the financial statement and annual return forms covered under annual
compliance; for LLPs, the Statement of Account and Solvency and the annual return, covered under
LLP annual filing. Director loans, related-party transactions and share capital changes need
careful ledger treatment, because the filings disclose them.
What Records Are Maintained in Bookkeeping?
Records fall into two groups: the books themselves, and the documents that support each entry.
| Record |
What it holds |
Who relies on it |
| Cash book |
Every cash receipt and payment |
Owner, tax officer |
| Bank book |
Every bank transaction, with reconciliation |
Auditor, lender |
| Sales register and customer ledgers |
Invoices raised and amounts collected |
GST return, receivables follow-up |
| Purchase register and vendor ledgers |
Bills received and amounts paid, with credit eligibility
|
GST credit claim, payables planning |
| Journal |
Adjustments such as accruals, depreciation, corrections
|
Auditor |
| General ledger |
Every account, with running balance |
Everyone downstream |
| Fixed asset register |
Cost, date, depreciation of each asset |
Balance sheet, tax computation |
| Stock register |
Quantities and value of inventory |
Gross margin, GST |
| GST records |
Outward and inward supplies, credit, tax payable, reverse charge
|
GST officer |
| TDS records |
Deductions made, deposited and returns filed |
TDS department |
| Payroll records |
Salary, PF, ESI, deductions |
Employees, statutory bodies |
| Reconciliation statements |
Bank, card, gateway and party differences explained
|
Auditor |
| Trial balance |
Totals of every ledger |
Year-end finalisation |
Supporting documents are the originals behind those entries: invoices, bills, bank statements,
receipt and payment vouchers, contracts, delivery challans, e-way bills, and tax payment
challans.
How long to keep them depends on who is asking:
Companies must preserve books and vouchers for at least eight financial years under
Section 128 of the Companies Act, with a longer period if an investigation is
ordered.
GST-registered persons must retain records until 72 months after the due date of
the annual return for the year, and for one year after final disposal of any appeal
or proceeding, whichever is later. The GST portal carries the Act and Rules.
Income tax has its own retention period for books, and the older law's period was
six years from the end of the relevant assessment year; check the current rules
under the 2025 Act.
Because the longest rule governs in practice, keeping everything for eight financial years, in a
backed-up electronic copy, covers all three. Rule 56(7) of the CGST Rules also expects records
at the principal place of business, and says that includes data stored electronically.
Accounting & Bookkeeping vs. Accounting Software
Software is a tool. Bookkeeping is the work done with it. The software records what is entered,
and it has no way of knowing that an entry is wrong.
| Question |
Software alone |
Software with a bookkeeping service |
| Who enters the transactions? |
You or your staff |
A trained accountant |
|
Who catches a wrong GST rate or the wrong expense head?
|
Nobody, unless you spot it |
The reviewer, at entry or at close |
| Is the bank reconciled? |
Only if you do it |
Every month |
| Who prepares and explains the reports? |
You |
The service, with a walkthrough |
| Who knows what changed in GST or TDS rules? |
You |
A CA team |
| Who owns the data? |
You |
You, if the arrangement is set up correctly |
| Cost |
Licence fee plus your time |
Licence fee plus the plan fee |
Software alone is enough when your volume is small, you are comfortable with GST and TDS, and
you will actually do the monthly close. Some packages have free tiers for micro businesses; Zoho
Books, for example, lists a free plan, though you should check its current limits.
A service is worth adding when you notice the books drifting from reality: late reports,
unexplained bank differences, GST credit that does not agree with GSTR-2B, or a founder who
spends Sundays on data entry. The best arrangement is usually hybrid: you hold the licence and
own the data, and we operate the software.
How Much Do Accounting & Bookkeeping Services Cost in India?
Pricing depends on how much work your books create, and a monthly figure is meaningful only next
to a transaction cap and a list of inclusions.
What moves the price:
Monthly transaction volume
The number of bank accounts, cards and payment gateways
Whether payroll, TDS and GST mapping are included
Inventory, multiple GSTINs or multiple locations
Reporting depth, from a simple P&L to full MIS
Unbooked past months that need cleanup before regular work starts
LegalDev publishes three monthly plans on its accounting and bookkeeping service page:
| Plan |
Volume |
Monthly professional fee |
What it covers |
| Starter |
Up to 50 transactions a month |
₹1,499 |
Early-stage startups and consultancies: voucher entry, reconciliation, monthly
reports
|
| Growth |
Up to 200 transactions a month |
₹2,999 |
Adds vendor reconciliation, monthly MIS and TDS mapping
|
| Enterprise / E-commerce |
High volume |
₹5,999 |
Payment gateway, inventory and multichannel reconciliation
|
Please confirm the current fee and whether taxes are extra before you commit; plans and prices
are revised from time to time. Past-month cleanup is scoped separately after we look at the
state of the books.
For a market reference, the published plan pages of two large Indian providers, IndiaFilings and
RegisterKaro, showed entry plans in the low thousands of rupees a month and top plans from
roughly ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 or more, as of early October 2026. A fee near the bottom of that
range can be perfectly fair for a small business, but compare these points before you decide a
quote is cheap:
What is the transaction cap, and what is charged beyond it?
Is bank reconciliation done every month?
Are monthly reports included, and which ones?
Are GST returns, TDS returns and income tax filing included, or sold
separately?
Is cleanup of old books included or extra?
Does the fee include the software licence?
A low fee that leaves out reconciliation and reports often costs more by year-end, because the
missing work reappears as correction charges, penalties or an auditor's overtime.
Why Choose LegalDev for Accounting & Bookkeeping Services?
The reasons below are specific and checkable against the service page.
CA-led work. Chartered Accountants oversee GST, TDS and year-end
work, and a dedicated CA, CS or advocate is assigned to your engagement.
Your software, or ours. We work on Zoho Books, TallyPrime,
QuickBooks Online, Busy and Marg ERP, so you do not have to change tools to change
provider.
Reports by the 10th. Profit and loss, balance sheet, and
receivables and payables ageing arrive early enough in the month to be used.
Payment gateway reconciliation. Razorpay, Stripe, PayU and Shopify
payouts are matched back to individual invoices, with fees and net cash
tracked.
Audit trail awareness. We work to the company-law rule that
accounting software must keep an edit log that cannot be disabled.
Plan caps in plain view. Three plans with stated transaction
limits, so you can see where you fit.
Free consultation before payment. You can describe your books and
get a recommendation before spending anything.
Related work under one team. GST, TDS, payroll and annual company
filings are offered as services of the same platform, so your books and filings are
prepared from the same records.
We are also direct about fit. Businesses with only one or two transactions in a year are better
served by a year-end finalisation than a monthly plan.
LegalDev is a private consultancy and has no affiliation with any government body. Links to
official sources in this article are there so you can verify the law, and the guide is general
information, not advice on your particular case.
Frequently Asked Questions About Accounting & Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping records a business's day-to-day transactions: sales, purchases,
receipts, payments and dues. Accounting takes those records, reconciles them against
bank and tax data, classifies them, and prepares statements such as the profit and
loss account and balance sheet. Together they give owners, tax officers, lenders and
auditors a reliable picture of what the business earned, owns and owes.
Bookkeeping is recording; accounting is interpreting and reporting. A bookkeeper
enters vouchers and keeps ledgers current. An accountant reviews those ledgers,
reconciles them, makes adjustments such as depreciation and accruals, prepares
financial statements, and supports tax computation. Small businesses usually need
both, delivered together, because bad bookkeeping produces bad accounting.
Outsourced bookkeeping in India commonly runs from about ₹1,500 to ₹25,000 a month,
depending on transaction volume, number of bank accounts, and whether GST, TDS and
payroll are included. LegalDev's published plans start at ₹1,499 a month for up to
50 transactions and ₹2,999 for up to 200. Confirm the scope and any tax before
comparing quotes.
Yes. A provider can enter transactions, reconcile bank accounts, track receivables
and payables, map GST and TDS, and deliver monthly reports, all remotely. You still
send documents on time, approve payments and keep admin access to your software and
data. Businesses that handle cash on site need to record that cash locally before it
reaches the outsourced team.
Online bookkeeping services keep your books without anyone visiting your office. You
share bank statements, invoices and bills through a secure drive or messaging app,
and the accountant records and reconciles them in cloud or desktop software such as
Zoho Books, QuickBooks Online or TallyPrime. You receive reports digitally and can
open the books yourself.
In most cases, yes. A business above the income and turnover limits in income-tax
law must keep books, a GST-registered business must keep prescribed records, and
companies and LLPs must keep double-entry books. Even below those limits, books are
how you learn whether you are profitable, who owes you money, and whether you can
afford the next order.
You need bank statements for every business account, sales invoices or marketplace
reports, purchase bills and expense vouchers, payment gateway settlement reports,
payroll sheets if you employ staff, and loan statements. For a first-time setup, add
last year's audited balance sheet and opening trial balance if you have them. GST
and TDS return copies help with reconciliation.
Yes. We maintain sales and purchase registers with GST mapping, reverse charge
entries, credit and debit notes, and reconcile purchases to GSTR-2B so credit is
claimed only where it is supported. Return filing is a separate LegalDev service,
and the books we keep feed it directly, so the filed figures and your ledgers agree.
Yes, and early is better. Startups benefit from a properly built chart of accounts,
correct treatment of founder-paid expenses and share capital, software with an audit
trail, and a monthly report on revenue, burn and runway. Clean books from the first
month make fundraising due diligence and the first statutory audit far easier.
Monthly is the practical minimum, because GST returns, TDS deposits and cash
planning all run on monthly cycles. High-volume or cash-heavy businesses, such as
retail counters and online sellers, benefit from daily or weekly entry. Bank
reconciliation, ageing review and a management report should happen at least once a
month, with a full closing at year-end.
A standard service includes voucher entry for sales, purchases, receipts and
payments, expense classification, ledger maintenance, bank and card reconciliation,
accounts payable and receivable tracking, GST and TDS mapping, and monthly reports.
Scope varies, so ask about payroll, return filing, past-month cleanup and the
transaction cap before you compare prices.
Yes. Accounts can be maintained entirely online using cloud software or a shared
desktop file, with documents exchanged digitally. Companies must make sure
electronic books remain accessible in India, that the software keeps a
non-disableable audit trail, and that backups are held as the Companies (Accounts)
Rules require. Retain a copy of your data under your own control.
Start with scope: transaction cap, monthly reconciliation, reports delivered, and
what is excluded. Check that the provider works on your software, that a qualified
CA oversees GST and TDS work, and that you keep ownership of the data. Ask how
backlog cleanup is priced, how fast reports arrive, and who you talk to when
something looks wrong.
Bookkeeping maintains the records throughout the year. Tax filing is a periodic act
that uses those records to report to the authorities: GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for GST,
TDS returns, and the income tax return. A filing is only as accurate as the books
beneath it, which is why many providers offer both and why books should be
reconciled before returns are filed.
Yes. Our plans are monthly: documents come in during the month, books are
reconciled, and profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and ageing reports are
shared by the 10th. Three plans (Starter, Growth and Enterprise / E-commerce) are
sized by transaction volume. A free consultation helps pick the right one.