VAT and Accounting Software: What a Business in Bangladesh Should Look For

The accountant spends the first two weeks of every month collecting last month's invoices, typing them into a sheet and preparing the return. The numbers are right, eventually. But the owner never knows this month's profit until the month is long over.

What it should do every day

• Sales and purchase invoices that post to the ledger on their own
• Customer and supplier dues, with ageing
• Cash, bank and mobile banking balances in one place
• Stock that moves when an invoice is saved
• Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow on demand

The VAT side

A VAT-registered business issues tax invoices in the Mushak-6.3 format, keeps purchase and sales registers, and files the monthly return in Mushak-9.1. Good software produces the invoice in the right format when the sale is made and builds the registers from the same entries, so the return is a report and not a two-week project.

Confirm this before you buy

NBR has rules on which businesses must use approved VAT software, and the rules and forms change from time to time. Ask your VAT consultant what applies to your business, and ask the vendor in writing which Mushak forms the software produces and how updates are handled when the rules change.

Ready-made or custom

A trading business with straightforward buying and selling is usually well served by a ready-made accounting package. Custom work makes sense when accounting has to be tied to your own operations: production costing, project-wise accounts, several branches, or a POS and website feeding the same books.

Whichever you choose, make sure you can export your full ledger at any time. Your books should never be locked inside one vendor's system.