A company wants to change its outsourcing accounting service provider. Does the outsourced accountant have the obligation to transfer the database from the accounting program to the company whose accounting is provided? Often, accountants come up with various reservations in order not to transfer it, as a result, the company has problems transferring accounting data to the new accountant.
Section 34, Part 1 of the Accounting Law (GL) stipulates that if the company's accounting is handled by an outsourced accountant, the head of the company must enter into a corresponding written agreement, in which the duties, rights and responsibilities of this person (outsourced accountant) are determined.
An outsourced accountant, in the sense of the aforementioned law, can be both a natural person and a merchant who is responsible for providing accounting outsourcing services.
GL does not have any mandatory requirements when entering into such an agreement with an outsourced accountant. It can be concluded from this that the contract for the provision of accounting services is a civil transaction between the parties, therefore it is necessary to specify the contract conditions as precisely as possible, which must meet the requirements of Articles 4, 5 and 6 of the GL, that is, that the important and the relevant information should be registered, organized, saved and, upon termination of the legal relationship, transferred in accordance with the accounting tasks, control and arrangement requirements.
Article 4 of GL stipulates that one of the tasks of accounting is to provide users of financial statements with true and complete information about the results of economic activity, financial position and cash flows. Therefore, the main duty of the accountant is to organize accounting documents in such a way that they meet the conditions and requirements of accounting.
On the other hand, according to Article 6, Part 5 of the GL, if accounting is done electronically, using an accounting computer program or accounting information computer system software, then the accounting documents are displayed on the screen of a computer or other electronic device in a human-readable format and provide the opportunity to create derivatives of these documents in paper form (printouts).
Taking into account all the mentioned accounting principles and conditions, it can be concluded that the accountant must transfer the company data to the company manager so that he can ensure successful accounting succession, even if the service provider is changed. Since the contract with the accounting service provider is a civil law transaction, such a contract should specify as precisely as possible the rules on the duties and responsibilities of the accountant, including specifying exactly in what format the accounting data is transferred to the company.
Source: iBizness