Somebody in your business is currently doing the books. If it is a founder, that is the most expensive bookkeeping in the country. If it is a junior hire, nobody is checking their work until the auditor does, a year later, when it is costly to fix.
We take the whole of it — bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, the audit file, the statutory queries and the reporting — and run it as your finance function in India. You get the numbers when you need them and the year-end goes through without drama, and you spend your own time on customers and operations instead.
A finance department, without building one
Hiring your own means an accountant, a payroll person, someone senior enough to review them, and a manager to hold the calendar. It means recruiting them, training them, covering their leave and replacing them when they go. Most businesses under a certain size cannot justify that bench — so they under-hire, and the work quietly slips.
This is that bench, shared. A qualified team that already knows Indian statutory reporting, already has the calendar, and is already reviewed by a partner before anything is filed. You get the capability of a finance department at a fraction of what standing one up costs, and none of the management overhead.
What you actually get
Your own time back
The founder stops reconciling bank statements at eleven at night. That hour is worth more spent on a customer, and everybody knows it.
Numbers you can act on
Books closed monthly rather than scrambled together in October, so the figure you are looking at in June is one you can price and hire against.
A quiet year end
The audit file is built through the year, not assembled in a fortnight. When the auditor raises a query it comes to us, and we answer it.
Nobody to replace
No recruitment, no notice periods, no handover when your accountant leaves in March. The knowledge sits with the firm, not with one person.
One number to call
Books, payroll, the auditor, the ROC filings and the labour registrations all sit with one team that already talks to each other.
A parent company can follow it
For a foreign parent, reporting in a format your own finance team recognises, on your own reporting calendar, in your own currency alongside the rupee.
Bookkeeping & Accounting
The daily work: recording what happened, reconciling it against the bank, and closing the month so the accounts mean something. Done properly it is invisible. Done badly it is discovered a year later, and everything downstream — the audit, the return, the valuation — is built on it.
- Recording sales, purchases, expenses, receipts and payments, on your accounting software or on ours
- Bank, card and wallet reconciliation, and reconciliation of the customer and supplier ledgers
- Fixed asset register, depreciation and the schedules that support it
- Monthly close — accruals, prepayments, provisions and the trial balance
- Preparation of the financial statements in the format the Companies Act requires
- Coordination with your tax advisers on GST and TDS positions so the books and the returns agree
- Clean-up of prior periods where the books have been left behind, before we take the current year on
You send us documents as they arise — a shared folder, email, or a direct feed from your billing system. We do not chase you at month end for nine months of paperwork.
Books are closed monthly, not annually. That is the single most useful thing about doing it this way: by the middle of the year you know where you stand, rather than finding out after it has ended.
Everything is kept so that it can be handed over. If you ever bring this in house, you get a complete, reconciled set of books and a working handover, not a shoebox.
Payroll Management
Payroll is the one process where a mistake is personal. It is also the one that touches the most statutes at once — provident fund, state insurance, professional tax, income tax withholding and the labour codes — and each has its own date.
- Monthly payroll processing, from attendance and leave through to the net payable
- Salary structuring, and the tax declarations and proofs your employees have to submit
- Payslips issued to employees, with a confidential channel for their queries so they do not come to you
- Provident fund and state insurance contributions, the monthly returns and the employee records behind them
- Professional tax, labour welfare fund and the state-level returns where they apply
- Tax withheld on salary, the quarterly returns and the annual certificate for each employee
- Joiners, leavers, full and final settlement, and gratuity computation
- Reimbursements, bonus, incentive runs and the year-end reconciliation to the books
Salary data is held by us, not circulated round your office. For a small team that matters more than it sounds — payroll is the fastest way for a founder to lose the confidence of a hire.
You approve one summary each month. Everything under it, including every statutory payment and return, is our responsibility to get out on time.
Employee questions about a payslip, a deduction or a tax proof come to us. You are not the help desk for your own payroll.
Audit Documentation & Statutory Audit Support
The statutory audit is where a year of loose bookkeeping becomes visible. Most of the pain is not the audit itself — it is that nobody prepared for it, so the team spends three weeks reconstructing documents while the auditor waits and the business stops.
We build the audit file as the year goes, and we deal with the auditor ourselves.
- Maintaining the audit file through the year — schedules, reconciliations, confirmations and supporting documents, filed as they arise rather than gathered at the end
- Preparing the full set the auditor asks for: fixed assets, debtors and creditors ageing, inventory, statutory dues, related party transactions and the loan schedules
- Obtaining balance confirmations from customers, suppliers and lenders
- Handling the auditor’s queries on your behalf — receiving them, tracing them, answering them with the working papers behind the answer, and coming back to you only where a business decision is genuinely needed
- Managing the audit timetable so that it does not collide with your quarter end
- Closing out the observations and putting right whatever the audit found, before the next year repeats it
- Supporting tax audit, transfer pricing documentation and group reporting packs where they apply
An audit query is rarely a question about the business. It is a question about a document — where is it, why does this not tie, who authorised that. Those are our questions to answer, and answering them takes us minutes and takes your team days.
We are Company Secretaries as well as accountants by trade, so the audit file is built knowing what the Companies Act, the Board’s Report and the annual filings will each want from it later.
You are independent of us in the one place it counts: we prepare, your auditor audits. We do not audit our own work.
Management Reporting & Review Meetings
Books that nobody reads are just a compliance cost. The point of closing every month is that somebody sits down with the numbers and decides something. That meeting is part of this service, not an extra.
Accounts closed and reconciled, with a short pack: profit and loss, cash position, debtors and creditors.
We sit with you and go through the quarter — what the numbers say, what changed, what is coming, and what needs a decision.
Before a board meeting, a funding round, a bank conversation or a parent-company review, we prepare what it needs and attend it with you.
Statutory audit, the annual filings and the year-end reporting your parent or your investors require.
- A monthly reporting pack in a format we agree with you, not a generic template
- Quarterly review meetings, in person or online, with the papers circulated before rather than tabled at the meeting
- Reports built to whatever you actually need to see — revenue by line, project or branch, cost centres, budget against actual, cash runway, receivable ageing
- Reporting to a foreign parent on its own calendar and in its own format, including a currency view alongside the rupee
- Board packs and investor updates, prepared with our secretarial team so the numbers and the minutes agree
- Ad hoc analysis when a decision needs it — pricing, a hire, a lease, a line of business
We ask at the outset what you want to see and how often, and we build to that. Client-specific reporting is the norm here, not a chargeable extra.
The quarterly meeting is deliberately a conversation and not a presentation. Most of the value in it comes from the things you tell us that the ledger does not show.
If something in the month looks wrong, you hear about it in the month. We do not save findings for the review.
Finding & Onboarding People in India
A business setting up in India usually needs two or three people long before it needs a department, and hiring those first few from outside the country is genuinely hard. You cannot easily judge a qualification you have not seen before, and you have nobody on the ground to sit in the room.
- Helping you scope the role — what it should pay, what qualification it genuinely needs, and whether it should be an employee, a consultant or outsourced to us
- Sourcing candidates for finance, accounts, administration and compliance roles through our own network
- Sitting in on interviews and giving you a view on the technical side where you cannot assess it yourself
- Background and credential checks, and verification of qualifications
- Offer letters and employment agreements, drafted to Indian law and to your group’s policies
- Onboarding — provident fund and state insurance registration, tax declarations, bank account and the induction paperwork
- Employee handbook, leave policy and the statutory policies a new employer must adopt, including the POSH policy and committee
We are not a recruitment agency and we do not charge a placement fee on a salary multiple. This is help finding the right two or three people, from a firm that will still be here afterwards.
Often the honest answer is that you do not need the hire yet, and the work should sit with us for another year. We will say so.
When you do hire, we hand the work over properly and step back to review rather than execute. Outgrowing this service is a normal ending, not a lost client.
Who this is for
Businesses entering India
- A foreign parent that has just incorporated a subsidiary, or opened a liaison, branch or project office, and has nobody here yet
- Groups that need Indian reporting to arrive in a form their own finance team can consolidate
- Companies whose first Indian hire should be a salesperson, not an accountant
- Parents who need somebody accountable in India when the auditor, the bank or a regulator asks a question
Established Indian businesses
- Founder-led companies where the founder is still doing the books, or checking them at night
- Businesses that have outgrown a part-time accountant but cannot yet justify a finance manager
- Companies whose audit is painful every year and who would like it not to be
- Groups with several entities that want one team holding the calendar across all of them
Accounting records must be kept under Section 128 of the Companies Act, 2013, and the financial statements prepared under Section 129 and Schedule III. The statutory audit is carried out by an auditor appointed under Section 139 — independent of us. We prepare and support; we do not audit what we have prepared.
Payroll obligations arise under the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the schemes made under it for provident fund and state insurance, the Code on Wages, 2019, the applicable State professional tax legislation, and Chapter XVII of the Income-tax Act, 1961 for tax withheld on salary.
Because the same firm holds your secretarial calendar, the books, the Board’s Report, the annual return and the statutory registers are prepared from one set of facts rather than reconciled between three advisers after the event.
Where a matter requires an opinion or a filing reserved to a professional, it is signed by a Company Secretary in Practice under the Company Secretaries Act, 1980, or by an Advocate where litigation or enforcement is in prospect.
Working with us
This is a retained engagement and it is judged over years, not by a single deliverable. It works because the same team holds the whole picture: the books, the payroll, the audit file, the secretarial calendar and the labour registrations, reviewed by a partner before anything leaves the office.
Fees are a fixed monthly retainer agreed at the outset against an agreed scope, so you can budget it. Where the volume of transactions or the number of employees changes materially, we revisit it with you rather than issuing a surprise.
Related practice groups
Speak to us
Tell us what your month currently looks like
Who does the books today, how many people are on payroll, and how the last audit went. That is enough for us to tell you what we would take over, what we would leave with you, and what it would cost each month — before you commit to anything.
This page describes the services offered by MPS & Associates, Company Secretaries, and the statutory provisions under which that work is carried out. It is general information about our practice and is not legal, tax, accounting or financial advice, an opinion or a solicitation. The statutory audit of a company is conducted by an independent auditor appointed under the Companies Act, 2013, and is not undertaken by this firm in respect of records it has itself prepared. Thresholds and procedures change; the position applicable to a particular business should be confirmed before it is acted upon.