How to send your CA a year of invoices in one file

Every year the same message arrives from my CA: "Please send all invoices for the financial year." And every year I'd open my sent mail, search for PDFs, download them one by one and drag them into a folder, hoping I hadn't missed one.

There's a better way to hand them over, and your CA will thank you for it. This is what they actually need, and how to send it in one go. It's practical, not tax advice: what your CA asks for depends on whether you're GST-registered and how you file, so follow their list where it differs.

What does my CA need from my invoices?

For your income tax return they need to know what you billed, to whom and when. If you're GST-registered, they also need the tax on each invoice for your GST returns. In practice that means a list with, for every invoice:

• Invoice number, so they can check the series has no gaps.
• Issue date, which decides the financial year it belongs to.
• Client name and, for GST, their details.
• Currency, because an invoice in dollars is recorded differently from one in rupees.
• The amount before tax, the tax, and the total.
• Whether it's been paid.

A spreadsheet holds all of that in one place, sorted by date, and adds up with a single formula. Forty PDFs make your CA type the same numbers back into a spreadsheet themselves.

Which dates count for the financial year?

In India the financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so FY 2025-26 is April 2025 to March 2026. An invoice belongs to the year of its issue date: one dated 30 March goes in the year that's ending, one dated 2 April in the new one. If you bill clients in a country that uses the calendar year, your CA may ask for January to December as well.

How do I export a year of invoices from Quire?

1. Open the editor and go to Defaults in the sidebar.
2. Scroll to Year end export.
3. Choose April to March (or Calendar year, or a custom range of dates), then pick the year.
4. Check the line underneath: it shows how many invoices are in that year and the total for each currency.
5. Click Download CSV and send the file to your CA.

The file opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, with one row per invoice and these columns: invoice number, issued, due, status, client, client details, project, currency, subtotal, tax name, tax rate, tax, total, deposit paid and amount due. Amounts are plain numbers, so they add up straight away. Year end export is part of Pro.

What should I check before I send it?

• Mark invoices as sent or paid. Drafts are left out unless you tick Include drafts, so an invoice you sent but never marked would be missing.
• Look for gaps in the numbering. If AB-0012 is missing, your CA will ask where it went. A cancelled invoice is better kept and marked than deleted. More on this in invoice numbering.
• Foreign currency invoices stay in their currency. The file shows the amount you billed in dollars or euros; your CA records the rupee value using the exchange rate they need. Tell them which invoices were exports.
• Send payment proof alongside. For clients abroad, the foreign inward remittance record from your bank for each payment. For Indian clients, your bank statement usually covers it.

If you bill clients in the US, how to invoice a US client from India covers the export side: the LUT, the wording on the invoice and the paperwork to keep.

Can I send the PDFs too?

Yes, and some CAs want both: the spreadsheet to work from and the PDFs as the record. Download any invoice as an A4 PDF from the editor. The spreadsheet just means nobody has to retype them.