The final step of submitting your annual return requires that you either submit a Financial Accountability Supplement (“FAS”) or Annual Financial Statements (“AFS”). This selection will depend on whether your company requires a financial audit or not.

Companies that require an audit must submit their audited AFS to the CIPC in a standardized financial reporting format, called XBRL. A company’s AFS can be converted from Word, Excel or PDF format to XBRL by an audit firm or online service provider, who will usually charge a fee according to the amount of pages in the document. After selecting the CAPTURE AFS button within the annual returns dashboard on eServices, the user will be directed to a dedicated submission portal to capture the XBRL formatted AFS.

Companies that do not require an audit will need to capture a FAS. This is a short questionnaire to determine who is responsible for the accounting records, financial statements and other roles within the company. It will request the names and ID/registration numbers of the people/companies who are responsible, and in the case of an independent review, the reviewer’s profession number.

When submitting a FAS the company will not need to submit their AFS to CIPC, however, it is required to keep signed and approved copies of your AFS as part of your company’s records.