What your accountant will ask for

• PAN of the business, and of the proprietor or partners or directors.
• Certificate of incorporation, partnership deed, or proprietorship registration, whichever applies.
• GST registration certificate, and the registration number for every state you are registered in.
• Bank statements for the period, ideally as the bank's own PDF or statement file rather than screenshots.
• Last filed income tax return with its computation, and the acknowledgement.
• Whatever books exist, in whatever state they exist. An honest picture of a mess is more useful than a tidy partial one.
• A current contact list: who signs, who authorises payments, who your accountant should chase for documents.

• Sales register for the period, with invoice level detail including tax rates and place of supply.
• Purchase register with supplier GST numbers, so input credit can be matched.
• Credit and debit notes issued and received.
• Export or supply invoices to units in special economic zones, with shipping documents, if applicable.
• Details of any reverse charge supplies.
• Records of stock transfers between your own registrations in different states.
• Whatever you have already filed for the period, if anyone filed anything.

The reconciliation between your purchase register and what your suppliers actually reported is where most GST work and most GST arguments live. Anything you can supply that makes it faster saves you money.

• Trial balance, profit and loss account and balance sheet for the year.
• The tax credit statement showing tax deducted on your behalf, and your annual information statement.
• Details of tax deducted by you, deposited, and the returns filed for it.
• Fixed asset register with additions and disposals during the year, and supporting invoices.
• Loan agreements and interest certificates, both borrowed and lent.
• Investment and deduction proofs relevant to the return.
• Stock statement at year end and the basis on which it was valued.
• Related party transactions, including anything with directors, partners or their families.
• Prior year audit report and financial statements, if there was an audit.

• Employee list with dates of joining and leaving, and salary structure for each.
• Provident fund and employee state insurance registration details, if applicable.
• Attendance and leave records for the period.
• Investment declarations and proofs submitted by employees.
• Details of bonus, incentives, reimbursements and anything paid outside regular salary.

• Identity and address proof for every proposed director or partner.
• Proof of the registered office address, and a no objection letter from the owner if it is rented.
• Passport sized photographs, still asked for more often than you would expect.
• Digital signature certificates, or the willingness to obtain them.
• Proposed names in order of preference, with a reason if a name resembles an existing one.
• For ongoing compliance: minutes, resolutions, registers and the prior year filings.

Your accountant needs to act on the GST portal, the income tax portal and sometimes the MCA portal. There is a right way and a common way, and they are not the same.

The right way

Use the facilities the portals already provide. Add your accountant as an authorised representative or an additional user, with the access they need. It is revocable, it is attributable, and it survives them leaving.

The common way

Send the password over chat. Fast, and it means an unknown number of people in that office can act as you, indefinitely, with no record of who did what.

Two rules that are worth being rigid about. Registrations must be made against an email address and phone number your business controls, never your accountant's, or you will lose access to your own portals when the relationship ends. And banking credentials are never shared with an accountant under any circumstances. Read only statement access or downloaded statements are what they need, and it is all they need.

• One channel, agreed at the start. Documents split across chat, email and a courier are documents that will go missing at the moment they matter.
• Sensible names. A file called `GST-sales-register-Apr-Jun.xlsx` costs nothing and saves an hour later.
• Original formats where you have them. A bank PDF beats a photograph of a screen, and a spreadsheet beats a scan of a printout.
• Ask for a receipt of what was sent, and keep your own copy of everything. Handing over your only copy is how businesses end up unable to reconstruct a year.

On Accmeet, documents shared inside an engagement stay attached to the thread that produced it, so the file, the request and the answer live in one place rather than in three apps.

You are about to give someone your financial position and your identity documents. Confirm who they are first. Get the ICAI membership number, check it in ICAI's directory, and read How to check whether a CA is genuine if you have not already.

On Accmeet a gold Verified CA badge means that check has already been run against official records, and businesses are verified too, so the accountant knows who they are working for. You can browse the network before creating anything.