Audit/
Accounting
SK Consult supports cross-border businesses with reliable audit and accounting preparation & coordination—ensuring accurate financial reporting, compliance alignment, and structured support delivered discreetly and efficiently.
Important note:
Where required, certified accountants and licensed auditors are engaged locally in the relevant jurisdiction.
Approvals are made independently by regulators/authorities
Your accounts are not a filing obligation. They are the evidence everyone else uses to judge you
Founders tend to treat bookkeeping as an administrative cost and the audit as an annual formality. That is a reasonable view right up to the moment someone important asks for the numbers. A bank reviewing a corporate account, an acquirer running a risk file, a regulator assessing a licence application, an investor opening a data room, a tax authority questioning where the business is really managed — every one of them starts with the financial statements. Books that were assembled at the last minute to satisfy a deadline read exactly like books that were assembled at the last minute, and the reader draws the obvious conclusion about how the rest of the business is run.
We approach accounting from the opposite end. The question is not "what is the minimum needed to file", it is "what will this file have to withstand". That changes practical decisions: how intra-group flows are recorded and documented, whether director and shareholder transactions are papered before or after the fact, whether the revenue recognition policy survives contact with an auditor who reads the underlying contracts, whether the management accounts a bank asks for mid-year can actually be produced in a week.
SK Consult provides accounting, reporting and audit coordination for Cyprus and EU companies and for the international groups they sit inside — including regulated entities, payment and crypto businesses, iGaming operators and holding structures with intra-group financing. Statutory audits are carried out by independent licensed audit firms; our role is to prepare the company so the audit is a confirmation rather than an investigation, and to be accountable for the outcome.
What the engagement covers
Engagements are scoped to the size and complexity of the structure. Most ongoing mandates include the components below; the diagnostic stage establishes which of them your structure actually requires.
Bookkeeping and management accounts
Ongoing recording of transactions in a form that produces both statutory financial statements and management information you can actually use — monthly or quarterly management accounts, cash position, receivables and payables ageing, and segment or entity-level reporting where a group needs it.
Statutory financial statements under IFRS
Preparation of financial statements in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the EU, which is mandatory for Cyprus companies. Including the accounting policies, the notes, related-party disclosures and the going-concern assessment — the sections that draw the most auditor and reader attention.
Audit coordination and readiness
Preparation of the audit file, reconciliation of balances, collection of supporting documentation and confirmations, and management of the auditor relationship through to signature. We work with independent licensed audit firms and remain the single point of accountability for the timetable.
Review engagements where the exemption applies
Where a company genuinely qualifies for the small-company exemption, coordination of a review engagement under ISRE 2400 instead of a full audit. We assess eligibility honestly — for most companies inside international groups the exemption is unavailable in practice, and we say so rather than sell it.
Corporate tax computation and returns
Preparation of the tax computation reconciling accounting profit to taxable income, the corporate income tax return, provisional tax estimates and revisions, and the balancing payment. Including deemed distribution analysis and the transitional rules that still apply to pre-2026 profits.
VAT, VIES and Intrastat compliance
Registration analysis, ongoing VAT returns, VIES recapitulative statements and Intrastat where thresholds are met. For cross-border service and digital businesses this includes place-of-supply analysis, which is where most VAT exposure is actually created.
Transfer pricing documentation and filings
The Summary Information Table, which every Cyprus taxpayer with controlled transactions must file regardless of value, and the Local File where category thresholds are exceeded. Including the simplified documentation required below the thresholds and the safe harbours available for financing and low value-adding services.
Payroll, social insurance and employer obligations
Payroll processing, social insurance and GESY contributions, employer registrations, payroll tax withholding and the annual employer return. Including the treatment of directors, non-resident employees and benefits in kind, which is a recurring source of assessment risk.
Registrar filings and corporate record-keeping
The annual return and its accompanying financial statements, changes to officers and share capital, register maintenance and beneficial ownership filings. Unglamorous, and the most common reason a company is found to be in default when a bank or buyer checks the public record.
Who this is for
Groups whose accounts have to satisfy someone other than the tax office
Businesses facing bank or acquirer onboarding, a licence application, a due-diligence process or an investment round, where the financial statements will be read critically by a party with the power to say no.
Structures with real intra-group complexity
Holding and financing structures, groups with management fees, royalties or intra-group loans, and businesses operating across several jurisdictions — where transfer pricing, permanent establishment and consolidation questions arise whether or not anyone has addressed them.
Companies that have fallen behind
Businesses with unfiled returns, overdue annual returns, un-audited historic years or an accounting function that has quietly stopped keeping up. Remediation is a distinct workstream and we treat it as one.
How we work
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Diagnostic and scoping
1–2 weeksReview of the current position: what has been filed, what is outstanding, the state of the underlying records, the intra-group flows and their documentation, and the deadlines that are actually binding. The output is a written assessment of exposure and a scoped proposal, not a generic quote.
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Remediation of historic periods
variableWhere prior years are incomplete or unfiled, we reconstruct and close them before taking on the current year. Doing this in the correct order matters: current-year figures that rest on unreconciled opening balances will not survive an audit, and a voluntary correction is treated very differently from one prompted by an assessment.
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Ongoing accounting cycle
monthly or quarterlyRecording, reconciliation and management reporting on a fixed cycle, with VAT and VIES filed as they fall due. The cycle is designed so that the year-end file is substantially complete before the year ends, rather than assembled afterwards.
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Year-end close and audit
4–10 weeksPreparation of the statutory financial statements, the audit file and the supporting documentation, management of the auditor through fieldwork and queries, and resolution of adjustments through to a signed opinion.
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Tax computation, filings and the following year
to deadlineThe tax computation and return, transfer pricing filings, provisional tax estimates and revisions, the annual return to the Registrar, and a written note of what should change in the coming year — in policy, documentation or structure.
Timelines assume records are available and reasonably complete. Where a company is being brought back into compliance after several years, the remediation stage dominates the schedule and is quoted separately.
The rules that set the timetable
Several Cyprus compliance dates changed for 2026, and the direction of travel is compression rather than relief. The table below states the current position and what it changes in practice. Positions are stated as at July 2026 and should be confirmed for your specific facts before being relied upon.
What actually decides the outcome
Whether the documentation was created at the time
A loan agreement signed in the year the loan was made is evidence. The same agreement produced during an audit, dated retrospectively, is a problem — for the auditor, for the tax position and for anyone later relying on the accounts. We paper transactions when they happen, and we will not backdate.
Whether the numbers agree with everything else you have said
The financial statements, the tax return, the VAT returns, the bank application, the licence file and the marketing site all describe the same business. Where they diverge — different revenue, different activity, different geography — that divergence is what a reviewer investigates, and it is far more damaging than any single number.
Whether intra-group pricing has a rationale
Management fees and intra-group loans are normal. Management fees with no service, no method and no benchmark are an adjustment waiting to happen. The pricing question is separate from the documentation question, and answering the second without the first is the common mistake.
Whether the accounting policy survives the underlying contracts
Revenue recognition, capitalisation, provisioning and consolidation are judgements. An auditor who reads the contracts will test whether the policy applied matches what was actually agreed with customers. This is a routine source of restatement in fast-growing digital and payments businesses.
Whether the year-end file exists before year end
The difference between a four-week audit and a four-month audit is almost never the auditor. It is whether reconciliations, confirmations and supporting documents were maintained through the year or are being hunted for afterwards, by which time counterparties are slow and memories are unreliable.
Whether someone is accountable for the calendar
Cyprus compliance now runs on a tighter calendar with several independent deadlines — tax, VAT, VIES, transfer pricing, payroll, the Registrar. Each has its own penalty. In practice most defaults are not disputes about substance; they are dates nobody owned.
Where this usually goes wrong
- Planning around the old calendar. Groups that budgeted for a 31 March return and an August payment are now facing both on 31 January of the second year following — earlier filing and earlier cash out, in the same move.
- Assuming the raised audit threshold applies. The EUR 300,000 turnover headline is widely reported without the EUR 500,000 gross asset test, the two-consecutive-year requirement, or the fact that intra-group balances usually breach the asset test on their own.
- Treating the Summary Information Table as a large-company obligation. It has no minimum value. A company with a single director loan and nothing else has controlled transactions and a filing duty.
- Confusing "below the Local File threshold" with "no transfer pricing documentation". Simplified documentation is still required, and the absence of any analysis is exactly what an assessment is built on.
- Letting management accounts and statutory accounts drift apart. When a bank asks for interim figures mid-year and they do not reconcile to the last audited statements, the question stops being about the numbers and starts being about the controls.
- Booking intra-group flows without agreements. Balances described in the accounts as loans, with no loan agreement, no term and no rate, are re-characterised readily — as distributions, as income, or as evidence that the entities are not operating independently.
- Leaving historic years un-audited while trading continues. The exposure compounds, the records degrade, and the remediation cost rises faster than the underlying liability. It also surfaces at the worst possible moment, in someone else's due diligence.
- Choosing a provider on monthly fee alone. The cheapest bookkeeping produces the most expensive audit, the most tax adjustments and the longest onboarding — and none of that appears in the quote.
What we will need from you
The list below covers a standard onboarding. Where historic periods are being remediated, the request extends to those years as well.
- Corporate documents: certificate of incorporation, memorandum and articles, current officer and shareholder registers
- Prior-year financial statements, audit reports and tax computations, and details of any unfiled periods
- Access to accounting records and any existing bookkeeping system, including the trial balance and general ledger
- Bank statements for all accounts, including payment-provider and EMI accounts, for the periods in scope
- Customer and supplier contracts material to revenue recognition and to place-of-supply analysis
- All intra-group agreements: loans, management services, licensing and cost-sharing arrangements
- Payroll records, employment contracts and details of director remuneration and benefits
- VAT registration details and copies of VAT, VIES and Intrastat filings for the periods in scope
- Correspondence with the Tax Department, the Registrar or any other authority, including assessments and notices
What drives the cost
We quote against a defined scope after the diagnostic. The factors below explain why two companies of similar turnover can differ several-fold in fee.
- Transaction volume and the number of bank, EMI and payment-provider accounts to reconcile
- Number of entities, whether consolidation is required, and how many jurisdictions are involved
- The quality of the existing records — reconstruction is the single largest variable in any first-year engagement
- Whether historic periods must be remediated, and how many years are open
- Transfer pricing complexity: number of controlled transaction categories, threshold breaches and benchmarking requirements
- Whether the entity is regulated and therefore subject to additional supervisory reporting
- Audit fees, which are set by the independent audit firm and quoted separately from our own
Questions we are asked
Does my Cyprus company really need an audit?
Almost certainly yes. The exemption requires net turnover under EUR 300,000 and total gross assets under EUR 500,000, both tests, in two consecutive years — and even then it substitutes a review engagement rather than removing the assurance requirement. Companies inside international groups usually fail the asset test on intra-group balances alone, and a group auditor will normally require a full audit for consolidation regardless of local exemptions.
We are behind on filings. Is it better to come forward or wait?
Come forward, and in the right order. Voluntary regularisation is treated materially better than a position discovered through an assessment or a bank enquiry, penalties and interest continue to accrue while nothing happens, and the records needed to reconstruct earlier years degrade quickly once counterparties and former staff move on. The sequence matters too: closing the current year on unreconciled opening balances simply moves the problem forward.
What actually changed for 2026, in one answer?
The corporate rate went to 15%. The return and the final tax payment both moved to 31 January of the second year following, from 31 March and 1 August respectively. Local File thresholds rose to EUR 10m, EUR 5m and EUR 2.5m by category, while the Summary Information Table still applies with no de minimis. The audit exemption turnover threshold rose to EUR 300,000 from 6 February 2026. The compliance calendar tightened; the substantive obligations did not loosen.
Do you provide the audit yourselves?
No, and that separation is deliberate. Statutory audits are performed by independent licensed audit firms; we prepare the company, assemble the file and manage the process to signature. Where you have no auditor we will introduce suitable firms and let you appoint. If your group already has an auditor we work to their requirements.
We have a management fee between two of our companies. Is that a problem?
Not in itself — intra-group charges are ordinary. It becomes a problem when there is no agreement, no evidence that a service was actually provided, and no method behind the amount. Both jurisdictions have an interest in the same number, one to deny the deduction and one to tax the income, and the taxpayer with no analysis loses both arguments. We would look at the pricing basis first and the paperwork second.
Can you work with our existing accountant or in-house team?
Yes, and often that is the sensible arrangement. A common split is the in-house team handling day-to-day bookkeeping while we take year-end close, tax, transfer pricing and audit management. What we ask for is a clear allocation of responsibility for each deadline, in writing, because shared ownership of a calendar is how deadlines get missed.
Our accounts have to support a bank application. Does that change anything?
It changes the emphasis. Compliance accounts answer to a filing deadline; accounts read by a bank, an acquirer or a regulator answer to a reviewer looking for inconsistency. We prepare with that reader in mind — related-party disclosure that is complete rather than minimal, an activity description that matches the licence and the website, and interim figures that reconcile cleanly to the last audited statements. It is the same underlying work, ordered differently.
Related services
This page is general information about our services, current as at July 2026, and is not accounting, audit, tax or legal advice. Thresholds, deadlines and rates change, and their application depends on the specific facts of each structure. Statutory audits are performed by independent licensed audit firms. Please obtain advice on your own circumstances before acting.
Contact us
If you need practical legal and compliance support for cross-border operations, please get in touch with a brief overview of your business model, the jurisdictions involved, and your key counterparties—such as banks, EMIs, PSPs, or other partners. Based on that information, a proposed scope of work and recommended next steps can be provided.
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