The Accounting Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) (1993) added the provision of "agency bookkeeping" for the first time, allowing units that do not have the conditions to set up independent accounting institutions or have accountants to entrust an approved accounting consulting service agency to do bookkeeping, which affirmed the legal status of agency bookkeeping for the first time. Since then, more detailed and specific normative policies have been introduced one after another, which has also laid the foundation for the standardized development of the bookkeeping industry.
Traditional business such as financial bookkeeping, accounting, tax filing, etc. All belong to the scope of internal accounting. However, with the rapid development of small and medium-sized enterprises in China, a large number of small and medium-sized companies do not have complete accounting ability due to the limitation of human and financial resources. Therefore, some enterprises choose to entrust a series of accounting work, such as accounting, bookkeeping and tax filing. Give it to a professional bookkeeping service provider, and only set up a cashier to be responsible for daily fund collection and payment and property preservation.
This shows that the bookkeeping business itself is not difficult to understand, and it can be considered as outsourcing the work of its own financial department to professionals.
Bookkeeping service is essentially to build a bridge between small and medium-sized enterprises with relatively weak accounting and the fiscal and taxation system. For bookkeeping service providers, the input is the basic documents such as invoices and vouchers of enterprise customers, and the final output is the standardized financial statements for enterprises, and the second is the tax-related tax returns and various tax documents of tax authorities.
In the actual workflow, after signing the cooperation contract with the enterprise, the accounting service personnel of the accounting service company will collect the business invoices, bank receipts and payments and other vouchers of the enterprise on a monthly basis, sort out and calculate the vouchers, fill in accounting entries, prepare monthly, quarterly or annual financial statements, complete tax forms on behalf of the enterprise, make tax returns in the local tax and national tax systems, and finally return the sorted original vouchers and financial statements to the enterprise customers.
In this process, the agency bookkeeping company will communicate with the company in time on the accounting and tax issues of the company, and the first-hand information related to the latest fiscal and taxation policies and regulations will also inform the company customers.
Bookkeeping service can obtain the core financial data of enterprises and help enterprises to save taxes reasonably and legally through professional tax and financial knowledge and experience, so its business is usually highly valued by the decision-making level of enterprise management.
Based on this, the services provided by the current accounting service companies are no longer limited to "narrow" accounting services, but also provide "broad" financial consulting services such as financial consulting and tax planning.
Bookkeeping services in a broad sense include:
1. Voucher collection, bookkeeping, accounting and tax declaration are all "standard bookkeeping services".
2. Acting as an agent for the overall tax arrangement of enterprises, tax assessment of investment projects and making tax-related documents.
3. Establish enterprise tax accounting system and design enterprise financial system.
4. Assist enterprises to carry out joint-stock reform and mergers and acquisitions between enterprises, and design management systems as agents.
The main customers of agency bookkeeping industry are small and micro enterprises and large individual industrial and commercial households.
The business of medium and large enterprises is complex and diverse, and generally there is a special financial department, and the accounting personnel hired internally complete the bookkeeping and tax return process. Larger enterprises have the ability to bear the expenses of the financial department. Compared with the principal-agent company, the internal financial personnel have a more thorough understanding of the company's business and are handy in financial handling.
Small and medium-sized individual industrial and commercial households do not have high demand for bookkeeping and financial statements because of their small scale, and many individual industrial and commercial households do not even meet the tax standards. However, the business scale of small and micro enterprises and large individual industrial and commercial households is at a low level, and there is a demand for agency bookkeeping. But the general business is not complicated, and it is not necessary to hire a special accountant at a high cost.
Most small and micro enterprises and large individual industrial and commercial households choose to cooperate with external agency bookkeeping companies, on the one hand, to save personnel costs, on the other hand, to obtain more professional services and experience.
Of course, as mentioned above, bookkeeping, as the entrance of fiscal and taxation services, will further derive high-end services such as tax planning and financial consultation, which will also be favored by medium and large enterprises.