Cash Orders in Bulgaria: PKO and RKO, Explained for Small Business Owners

Cash receipt order (PKO): the document for money coming into the till

A cash receipt order, in Bulgarian ПКО, short for приходен касов ордер, is the document you use every time cash physically comes into your company's cash box. It is one of the primary accounting documents, alongside the invoice and the fiscal receipt, and it proves that a specific amount actually entered the company's till on a specific date.

• When you need one: a client pays in cash outside the usual retail till, the owner deposits personal funds into the company as a short-term loan, an overpayment gets refunded, an employee returns an unused cash advance.
• What it must contain: a sequential number and date, the reason for the payment, the amount in both figures and words, the name and role of the person handing over the cash, and signatures from both the person paying in and whoever is holding the till.
• Who issues it: usually whoever is responsible for the cash box, which in a one-person company is often the owner, even without a bookkeeper on staff.

A PKO does not replace the invoice for the underlying transaction: the invoice documents what was sold, the PKO documents only the physical cash coming in.

Cash payment order (RKO): the document for money leaving the till

The cash payment order, РКО, is the mirror document to the PKO: you issue one every time cash leaves the company's till, whether that is a small supplier payment or the owner withdrawing cash.

• Typical cases: a small cash payment to a supplier, a cash advance to an employee, the owner withdrawing cash for personal use, refunding an overpayment to a client.
• What it must contain: a sequential number and date, the reason for the payment, the amount in figures and words, the name of whoever receives the cash, and signatures from both the recipient and whoever handed over the money.
• Not a substitute for an invoice: an RKO alone is not enough to deduct an expense for tax purposes if the payment relates to a purchase of goods or services. You still need an invoice or an equivalent supporting document. The RKO only confirms the cash physically left the till.

Without an RKO, cash disappears from the till without a trace: an amount is missing physically, with nothing on record explaining why.

The cash book: how PKO and RKO keep the daily balance straight

The cash book, касова книга, is the daily ledger where every PKO and RKO gets recorded in order. It is what ties the individual documents to the actual amount of cash that should physically be sitting in the till at the end of the day.

• The formula is simple: opening balance for the day, plus the total of all PKOs issued that day, minus the total of all RKOs issued that day, equals the closing balance.
• The closing balance has to match the cash you actually count in the till. Any gap, even a small one, is a signal to sort out immediately, not at month end.
• A retail shop or workshop with daily cash sales typically keeps the cash book alongside the daily report from its fiscal device under the Наредба Н-18 fiscal device regulation, but PKO and RKO themselves cover cash movements outside ordinary retail sales.

Skip the cash book, and an NRA audit has no chronology to check against, making it hard to prove where any given cash amount came from or went.

When a small company actually needs PKO and RKO

Plenty of small Bulgarian companies run almost entirely by bank transfer: supplier payments, invoices settled to a bank account, card payments from clients. For these, there is barely any cash on hand, and barely any need for PKO or RKO.

• Petty cash: small, urgent expenses, office supplies or a courier, paid in cash from the till instead of a company card.
• Cash moving between people: the owner depositing personal funds into the company as a short-term loan, or withdrawing cash from the till for personal use.
• Employee advances: cash handed to an employee up front for a business trip or minor expenses, settled later against receipts.
• Refunding overpayments: a client paid too much in cash, and the difference is handed back immediately, documented with an RKO.

If your company never touches physical cash, you probably will not need PKO or RKO often. The moment even one cash transaction happens, the document is required, regardless of how small the amount is.

The cash payment limit, and why the paperwork protects your company

The Bulgarian Act on Limiting Cash Payments, Закон за ограничаване на плащанията в брой, sets a clear line: payments made on Bulgarian territory must go through a bank once the amount reaches a certain threshold. Before Bulgaria adopted the euro, that threshold was BGN 10,000. As of 1 January 2026, with the euro in place and the fixed conversion rate of 1.95583 BGN per euro, the same threshold works out to roughly EUR 5,113.

• The rule also applies to split payments: a single deal worth more than the threshold cannot legally be broken into several smaller cash payments just to dodge the requirement.
• Penalties for breaching the law fall on both sides of the payment, the party paying and the one receiving, not only the selling company.
• Even below the threshold, every cash movement through the till needs a PKO or RKO. Without one, an amount in the cash box simply cannot be explained during an audit.

Primary accounting documents, PKO and RKO included, generally need to be kept for at least 10 years under the Bulgarian Accounting Act, with the exact retention period depending on the document type. A missing or incorrectly filled cash order can trigger a recalculated tax result and extra penalties during an NRA audit, even when the underlying transaction was entirely legitimate.

PKO and RKO are just one piece of a small company's paperwork

Cash orders solve one specific problem: tracking cash in and out. The rest of your paperwork, expenses, invoices, and having an expert to ask when something looks off, matters just as much for staying on the right side of the NRA.

Useful next reads:

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Get an accounting expert on hand when you need one
Issue invoices directly through FreeMe.bg
Fiscal devices and SUPTO: what a small business needs to know

FreeMe.bg keeps every PKO and RKO alongside the rest of your documents in one place, instead of scattered across notebooks and folders. Log in with your Google account and get your company's cash sorted without spreadsheets.