Monthly Accounting for Estonian Companies

If your OÜ has no transactions and no employees in a given month, the filing obligations are minimal but not zero. With no employees, there is no TSD to file. If not VAT-registered, there is no KMD to file. However, the Raamatupidamise seadus requires that accounts be maintained — ‘no activity’ months still need to be recorded (as nil periods) and the annual report must still be filed. If you have existing bank balances, share capital, or any outstanding balances from prior months, these must still be reflected accurately. We typically recommend a minimal-activity package for dormant OÜs: just annual report preparation and periodic check that accounts are accurate, at a much lower fee than a fully active company.

We make every effort to meet the EMTA deadline regardless, but very late documents create risk. The TSD deadline (10th) and KMD deadline (20th) are hard legal deadlines — late filing results in EMTA penalties and 0.06% per day interest on any unpaid tax. If documents arrive after the 5th, we flag this to you immediately and assess whether the deadline is still achievable. For payroll changes (new hires, salary changes), the 3rd is a more critical cut-off because the employment register update must also be completed before the TSD is filed. We always communicate proactively if a deadline is at risk — but preventing that risk starts with timely document delivery.

Yes — mid-year transitions are common and fully manageable. We request the prior period’s accounting files (trial balance, general ledger, prior TSD and KMD declarations) from your previous accountant, review them for any issues, and continue from where they left off. If there are errors in prior periods, we discuss the options with you: correcting them in the current period, filing amended declarations with EMTA, or noting them for the annual report review. The key practical step is that you authorise us as your EMTA representative (esindusõigus) so we can access your prior declarations and file future ones. This is done online in minutes.

If your OÜ has both VAT-taxable activities and VAT-exempt activities, you need to track input VAT recovery carefully — you can only reclaim input VAT that relates to taxable supplies. The KMD has specific fields for partial input VAT deduction (prorating between taxable and exempt activities). This is a more complex accounting situation that requires careful transaction classification from the start. Our Growth and Scale packages include this analysis. If your OÜ only has taxable supplies (the most common case for IT, e-commerce, and consulting), there is no proration needed — all input VAT is reclaimable subject to normal requirements.

EMTA does not mandate a specific accounting software. What it requires is that your accounting produces declarations that can be filed electronically through the EMTA e-Tax portal, and that your records meet the Raamatupidamise seadus requirements (double-entry, source documents, 7-year retention). Merit Aktiva is the most common choice for Estonian OÜs because it has direct EMTA integration. Other options include SimplBooks, Standard Books, and Xero (with Estonian tax configuration). International tools like QuickBooks or Sage can also be used but require more manual work to produce Estonian tax declarations. We use Merit Aktiva for all our clients because it reduces filing errors and saves time on every monthly cycle.