Annual inventory: Legal obligation and key steps for successful implementation

The inventory is a legal obligation and represents an annual inventory of assets and liabilities. The aforementioned obligation derives from the Law on Accounting and Auditing of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, number 15/21), with the aim of harmonizing the accounting balance with the actual balance of assets and liabilities.

A legal entity is required to conduct an annual inventory of assets and liabilities at the end of the business year, with the balance as of December 31 of the current year. The inventory may be conducted several times during the year (extraordinary inventory), but the aforementioned inventories do not exempt the legal entity from the inventory at the end of the business year.

If a legal entity does not list assets and liabilities in accordance with the provisions of the FBiH Law on Accounting and Auditing, the legal entity will be fined from 5,000.00 KM to 15,000.00 KM, and the responsible person will be fined from 500.00 KM to 3,000.00 KM. In order for the inventory to be carried out as efficiently as possible, it is necessary to carry out preparatory actions that will facilitate and ensure that everything is done within the given deadline.

Phases of conducting an inventory:

• Preparatory actions – The Internal General Act and the Census Decision include the appointment of a census commission (any employee who does not handle the assets subject to the census may be a member of the commission), preparation of census sites and census material, definition and compilation of a plan and instructions for conducting the census.
• Conducting an inventory – physical verification of assets and liabilities and filling out inventory lists with the actual status
• Comparison of accounting and actual balance - determination of inventory differences (surpluses and deficits)
• Compiling a report on the completed census - making conclusions on the results of the census and a proposal for dealing with certain forms of assets and liabilities
• Making a decision on how to deal with the determined census results – the final decision on how to deal with the census results is made by the company's management. The decision is the basis for accounting changes, no later than 45 days from the end of the business year.
• Accounting records - after the inventory has been carried out, it is necessary to make appropriate entries in accounting

Inventory differences represent the difference between the actual, listed balance and the accounting balance. The results of the inventory may show that the actual balance may be greater than the accounting balance, in which case we are talking about a surplus, or that it may be less than the accounting balance, in which case we have a deficit. Below we bring you more information about what happens when we have inventory differences. 

 Inventory surplus

Although a surplus is something that should not occur, in practice we still have these situations. They appear e.g. because of:

• incorrect entry of goods at entry,
• failure to record entries,
• incorrectly issued goods, or replacement of items during issuance,
• or due to other illegal actions.

If the surplus arises from normal business processes, it is recorded as income. 

Inventory shortage

When the listed balance is less than the recorded balance, we speak of a deficit. As a rule, the shortfall, as a consequence of the human factor, is charged to the responsible person. Then, in the bookkeeping, the shortfall is not recorded as an expense, but as a claim from the employee, in the amount of the purchase price with the corresponding amount of VAT. If, on the other hand, it is decided not to charge the responsible person, the deficit is reported as an unrecognized expense. The tax treatment of the deficit depends on the cause of its occurrence, the method of recording it and the amount. Non-taxable deficit Non-taxable deficits include:

• Waste, waste, damage and breakage, up to the amount determined by the Norms for determining expenses on which VAT is not payable,
• Shortages caused by force majeure, such as flood, fire, earthquakes, etc.,
• Shortages resulting from the expiration of the shelf life of goods, provided that the shelf life is printed on the product packaging or otherwise determined by the manufacturer, and that a representative of the sanitary inspection is present during the destruction of the said goods.

If the persons are not registered VAT payers, then the deficits and goods are not subject to the obligation to pay VAT. The regulations that define a non-taxable deficit are: Rulebook on the application of the VAT Law Article 11, Norms for determining expenses on which value added tax is not paid, Rulebook on the Implementation of the Law on Excise Duties in BiH.  

Reconciliation of receivables and payables

Legal entities are obliged to reconcile mutual claims and liabilities (balance confirmation) before preparing financial statements. As evidence of the existence of a certain balance of claims and liabilities, the accounting data of legal entities are used, which are entered and confirmed by an appropriate accounting document - the statement of open items form. The debtor, the recipient of the confirmation is obliged to respond to the sender, creditor or his auditor on the confirmation within eight days. The balance of liabilities and claims is determined as of December 31 of the current year.