Four months after the end of the financial year of the company, normally until April 30, for companies closing on December 31, all companies are required to file their books in the Mercantile Registry. Its formalization has to be done on the Internet, so that many times doubts arise as to whether it will be done correctly. We are going to clarify some of the most frequent doubts regarding the legalization of official accounting books.
What accounting books should be submitted?
The official books that must be presented to legalize are:
• A quarterly balance of sums and balances
• A balance sheet
• The Exploitation Account
• A Daily Book
• The Annual Accounts made by the Directors
• The Book of Minutes of the General Board
• The minutes book of the Board of Directors
• In Limited Liability Companies: The Partner Registration Book
• In Corporations: The book of Registered Nominative Shares if there have been changes
• In solepartner companies: The Contract Register book with the sole partner
If you do not want the Mercantile Registry to see the contents of the Minutes book, it can be encrypted using a password.
How to legalize official books online?
The legalization of the accounting books can only be done by electronically means through the program Legalia. To access it you must have a digital signature and be subscribed as a user of the page of the Association of Registrars. Once you have all the data filled in, the legalization process is quite simple and intuitive, although the College of Registrars has developed a manual to resolve any doubts. Obviously, it will be necessary that all the books are in the computer in PDF format or Excel to be able to include them in the program.
Once the books are sent to the register, they will be processed. Next, an accreditation will be received electronically stating that the books have been submitted and later, will receive confirmation of whether the process of legalization is correct or defective.
Mistakes in legalizing books
There are some errors that happen frequently to the presentation of the accounting books. The most typical of all is that it is considered out-of-date when presenting company books that do not close the year on December 31. It should be remembered that they should not always be presented on April 30, but 4 months after closing the fiscal year. In addition, it is necessary to know that, although the electronic route is used, any delivery done from 5:00 pm will be considered to be the next day.
Other common mistakes are that the numbers of the books do not coincide with those of the Registry (since they have to be correlative), that there are missing books to be delivered, or that the attached documents do not correspond to what they should be.
