As a part of Annual Filing, companies incorporated in India – including subsidiaries of foreign companies, joint venture companies and others, under the Companies Act, 1956 are required to file the following documents along with the e-Forms with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) with proper jurisdiction over the company:
- Balance-Sheet: Form 23AC to be filed by all companies
- Profit & Loss Account: Form 23ACA to be filed by all companies
- Annual Return: Form 20B to be filed by companies having share capital
- Annual Return: Form 21A to be filed by companies without share capital
- Compliance Certificate: Form 66 to be filed by companies with paid up capital between Rs. 10 lakh to Rs. 2 crore
Do’s and Don’t’s
Do’s (Pre-requisites)
- Apply for DIN from the MCA Portal in case you don’t have DIN
- Obtain Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) from any Certifying Authority) in case you don’t have one.
- Check the Master Data of your Company on the MCA portal, should there be any error, please get it corrected from the respective ROC office.
- Register the Digital Signature Certificate of the authorized signatory/ies of the Company on MCA portal.
- Download the latest version of the eForm and Instruction Kit from the MCA portal
- Read the instruction kit carefully before filling the Form and pre-scrutanising it. You will need to be connected to the Internet for doing the online pre-scrutiny of the Form.
- You can use the PDF conversion facility available on the MCA Portal. Business Users can upload a word/excel document on MCA portal for conversion and the converted PDF document will be sent by email to the user, automatically by the system.
- Upload the Form on MCA portal or visit the nearest Registrar’s Front Office (RFOs) with the soft copy of your eForms, for assistance. You can opt for bank challan, online payment through Credit Card or Net banking.
Don’ts
- Do not wait for the last date. To avoid rush and pressure on MCA as well as banking systems, please file at the earliest.
- Do not fill up the eForms in a hurry. Read the guidelines carefully before filling them.
- Do not forget to pay the filing fees at any authorized bank branch before the expiry date of the challan. If the challan expires, the Form filed shall not be considered for approval and the Company shall be required to upload the eForm again.
Important Points to Remember
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This time the Balance Sheet and the Profit & Loss Accounts are to be filed as two separate documents with different e-forms;
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Each e-Form along with the relevant attachment should be less than 2.5 MB.
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The Annual Return, the Balance Sheet and the Profit & Loss Account are filed as attachments to the respective e-Forms. So far, the users have been filing the attachments as scanned images of those documents. Please note that a scanned copy considerably increases the size of the document besides being more expensive. As such, you are advised to use the Text file/ Excel sheets as such, convert the same into PDF by using the PDF converter (the software is available on the portal for a registered user without any charge) and upload these attachments as PDF documents.
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The MCA21 database in respect of Authorized Capital and Paid-up Capital may not be correct. The companies have been requested to apply for correction of Master Data in this respect. Since this process is taking time, the Ministry will be accepting the Authorised Capital and Paid-up Capital figures as declared by the companies in the respective forms pertaining to Annual Filings. Accordingly, the companies are requested to declare the correct amount on these points without waiting for formal correction in the database.
How to do the Filing
The companies can do e-Filing in three different ways:
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The company representative can upload the e-Forms from the MCA21 portal through the ‘Annual Filing Process’ link (after registering oneself as a user of the portal) at his convenience from his office/ home. This is the most convenient way for e-Filing.
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The company representative can prepare the e-Form following the guidelines, copy them in a CD and go to the nearest Temporary Facilitation Offices (to be opened at Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Pune, Kanpur and Jallandhar ) opened for the purpose of accepting Annual Filings e-Forms. During the normal days, the TFO staff will help the company representative to upload the form and generate a Challan. During last 10 days of Oct and Nov. CDs will be collected and an acknowledgment given. The files will be uploaded into the system subsequently and the company will have to download the challan from the link provided at the Annual Filing Corner of the portal after two working days of the submission. At Other locations where TFO’s/Collection Centre are not being opened, the eForms will be accepted at the existing Registrar’s Front Offices (RFO).
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The company representative can also contact any of the Certified Filing Centers (CFCs) for the Annual Filing of e-Forms by paying the service charges to the CFCs. The details about the CFCs are available under the ‘CFC Corner’ on the MCA21 Portal.
