From posted books to a filed return

  1. 1See what's dueA calendar of filings for your country and fiscal year.
  2. 2GenerateFigures are pulled straight from posted transactions.
  3. 3ReviewOverride a line if needed. Every override is logged.
  4. 4FinalizeFreeze the return and export it.
  5. 5Mark as filedRecord the date and reference from the authority.

Due dates are indicative. The tax authority's own calendar always prevails.

Statutory Filings, under Compliance in the sidebar, turns your posted books into the tax returns and statutory reports your company is registered for — without you having to build them by hand.

Which specific forms are available to you depends on your company's country and the tax registrations your administrator has set up under Settings (see Settings); a country's forms, their exact fields, and how often each is due are configured behind the scenes as part of that country's tax pack. This page covers the generic shape of the workflow, which is the same regardless of which forms your country offers.

Step 1: See what's due

Open Compliance → Statutory Filings. The Filing obligations table lists every form your company is registered for, one row per period it applies to (monthly, quarterly, or annual, depending on the form), with its due date and current status — Missing (nothing generated yet), or the status of the filing already started for that period (see below).

Step 2: Generate a filing

Click Generate on an obligation row (or Generate filing from the top of the page and pick the form and period yourself). Confirm the period start/end dates — these default sensibly based on the form's frequency. Click Generate.

This computes every figure straight from your posted records for that period — nothing is filed anywhere yet. The result is a draft you can review before anything becomes official.

Step 3: Review the draft, and fix anything that needs a manual adjustment

Open the generated filing to see its line-by-line breakdown. If a specific line needs a manual correction — a figure your bookkeeper knows should differ from what the automatic calculation produced — click the edit icon on that line, enter the corrected amount and a required reason for the override. Overridden lines are clearly marked so it's obvious later which numbers were touched by hand and why.

If your books change after generating (a late invoice gets posted, for example), click Regenerate to recompute every line from your records again — your manual overrides are kept wherever that line still exists.

Step 4: Finalize

Once the draft looks right, click Finalize. This freezes the amounts as the official snapshot for that period — lines can no longer be edited after this point. If anything about the data looks unusual, you may still see a warning banner even after finalizing; review those, but they don't block you from finalizing.

Step 5: Mark as filed

After you've actually submitted the return to your tax authority (outside of BareLedger — filing itself isn't automated), come back and click Mark as filed. This is a bookkeeping status only — it records that the submission happened, for your own records and audit trail; it doesn't transmit anything anywhere.

Exporting

At any stage, use Export to download the filing in whatever format that form supports — PDF, CSV, Excel, or a country-specific format (such as a DAT or fixed-width text file), depending on what the form requires.

Withholding tax certificates

Two related but separate pipelines live alongside Statutory Filings, for creditable withholding tax specifically:

  • Withholding Credits — certificates customers give you, proving tax they withheld from what they paid you. Record them here as they arrive; see Sales: Invoices & Receipts for where this connects to your invoices and payments.
  • WHT Certificates — certificates you issue to suppliers, proving tax you withheld from what you paid them. See Purchases: Bills & Payments.

Common mix-ups

  • Expecting Mark as filed to actually submit your return — it only records that you did, for your own audit trail.
  • Trying to edit a line after finalizing — finalizing intentionally locks the snapshot; if something's genuinely wrong, regenerate a fresh draft isn't possible after finalizing, so double-check before you finalize.
  • Assuming every company sees the same forms — what's available depends entirely on your country and your registered tax types.