Do you remember the last time you sorted all of your company records? It can be quite confusing and frustrating keeping track of all of your documents. Nevertheless this is always the last task on your to-do list.
According to the Company Ordinance, Section 51C of the Inland Revenue Ordinance requires every person carrying on a trade, profession or business in Hong Kong to keep sufficient records in the English or Chinese language of his income and expenditure to enable the assessable profits to be readily ascertained. These records shall be retained for a period of not less than 7 years. Failure to comply with the requirements of the Ordinance without reasonable excuse may be liable to a maximum fine of HK$100,000.
Although you can view up to 6 months of records ( depending on which commercial bank you are using) via your online banking. We suggest you to download or request a monthly statement to be sent to your registered office address. As you will be needing all the monthly statements for year end accounting and auditing purpose.
Banks like The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC) Bank operates in Hong Kong, they do have a policy of retaining the records for up to a seven-year period. Customers are required to fill out a form at the HSBC Commerical branch and deduct an administrative fee of Hk$50 per page of reprint and sending to your registered office. This normally takes 1 to 2 weeks for the bank to process.
If you are unable to keep track of your company records, we suggest you to also get the bank to send you a monthly statement. Therefore, you are sure that there is a hardcopy of the statement to keep in your shoe box, so when it’s time for the year end accounting and auditing, you know where every documents are.
Centre O also offer monthly accounting service via Xero, we will be able to help keep, maintain, trace and also arrange monthly reconciliation with your bank status to reflect your business financial status.
You can read more about this here:
WHAT TO BRING IN FOR HSBC COMMERCIAL BANK ACCOUNT SETUP