Companies Act 2014 section 282

Basic requirements for accounting records

Section 282 sets out the basic requirements that accounting records must meet in order to be considered adequate, including what they must contain, how they must be maintained, and where they must be kept.

• Adequate accounting records must correctly record and explain transactions, allow determination of the company's financial position at any time, support preparation of compliant financial statements and directors' reports, and enable those statements to be audited
• Records must be kept on a continuous and consistent basis with timely entries; where records are not kept in bound books, adequate safeguards against falsification must be in place
• Records must include daily entries of all money received and spent, a record of assets and liabilities, details of goods and services transactions (including invoices, counterparties, and year-end stock statements), and must be kept in written form in an official language of the State or be readily convertible into such form
• Where records are held on computer, the server must generally be located in the State; a holding company must take reasonable steps to ensure any subsidiary not directly subject to these requirements nonetheless keeps adequate records to support preparation of group financial statements

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