Switching accountants in Bulgaria: what you really need

Switching accountants is not a betrayal

Let's start with the myth that stops most people: you do not need your accountant's permission to leave. Accounting is a service like any other, no different from switching banks or insurance providers. Check your contract for a notice period, usually a month, and that is the entire formality. No explanation is required, no meeting, no sign-off from anyone but you.

Many foreign founders inherit their accountant from the agency that set up their company, and stay for years out of inertia or guilt, especially when the language barrier makes it feel safer to stick with whoever is already there. Here is the second important fact: the accounting documents and registers are the property of your company, not of the practice that maintained them. On a switch, it is standard practice for the old accountant to hand over the package with a signed handover protocol: a list of what changes hands, a date, and signatures from both sides. Nobody at the tax authority raises an eyebrow. Changing accountants is routine, not an event, and the tax authority communicates with your company through whatever power of attorney is current, not through a specific person.

There is a third worry we hear often: “but they know how my business works.” The truth is that the knowledge about your company lives in the documents and registers, not in one person's head. If the bookkeeping has been done properly, any competent accountant can pick it up from the trial balance onward. And if it has not been done properly, that is one more reason to switch, not a reason to stay.

When is the cleanest moment

The easiest handover happens after the annual closing: the old accountant closes the year, the new one starts fresh on 1 January. This is convenient because there are no balances carried over mid-stream, and the annual report stays entirely in one accountant's hands from start to finish. But you do not have to wait that long:

• A VAT-registered company transfers most cleanly at a month boundary, right after the return for the past period has been filed. That way the new accountant starts from a clean point, with no unfinished VAT period split between two people.
• A company without VAT registration can move at any time, since there is no monthly filing cycle to interrupt halfway through.
• A dormant company can move literally whenever you decide. There are no running operations, invoices, or payroll to interrupt, so timing simply does not matter.

A mid-year transfer is routine, not an exception, even for a company with active contracts, employees, and ongoing projects. Do not postpone for half a year just because it is not 1 January: the cost of waiting is more months of the friction you are already feeling.

One practical tip: if the switch lands near year-end, agree explicitly on who handles the annual closing and by what date. The usual practice is that the outgoing firm closes the year it managed, and that this is written down in the handover protocol so there is no dispute later about who is responsible for which filing.

What we really need to get started

We are completely honest here, because things left unsaid get expensive later. To take over your accounting, two groups of things are needed: what you send us, and what comes from your old accountant. The more complete the package from day one, the faster and cheaper the handover.

From you (the minimum to start):

• your company's EIK (registration number): the incorporation data is public, we find it ourselves, so you do not need to dig up old registration paperwork;
• bank statements from the start of the current period, so we can reconcile the account movements against what the invoices show;
• the invoices you issued and received in the current period, including any still awaiting payment;
• a signed power of attorney to our accountant for filing with the tax authority: we prepare it, you only sign, usually electronically, without visiting any office.

From your old accountant (the standard handover package):

• an analytical trial balance as of the transfer date: this is the “photograph” of your company, the balance of every account. Without it, there is no way to continue from where things stand;
• the general ledger and the accounting registers, so we can see every transaction, not just the closing balances;
• the accounting and tax depreciation schedules, if the company owns assets: a property, a car, equipment, because depreciation needs to continue on the same schedule, not restart from zero;
• the unpaid invoices as of the transfer date: which invoices you issued are still unpaid by the customer (receivables) and which invoices you received are still unpaid to the supplier (payables), in full or in part. For each one we need the counterparty, number, date, due date, total amount, paid so far and what is still open. Add any advances received or paid, and any payments not matched to an invoice;
• payroll records and employment contracts, if there are employees, including any accrued but unpaid amounts.

So ask your old accountant for the report of unpaid (open) documents by counterparty, sometimes called “invoice balances”. If their program cannot produce one, a backup of the accounting program's database works, or at least a file with a list using the columns above. Also ask them to match payments to invoices in the old program before exporting. After the handover you will see these invoices in FreeMe as unpaid and can mark payments against them, so nothing gets lost.

The last published annual report and the filed tax returns are public or already at the tax authority: we retrieve those without anyone's help, so it is not a problem if your old accountant does not hand them over explicitly.

What if you don't have everything?

In the normal case you write to your old accountant, they prepare the package and hand it over with a protocol. The vast majority do this properly: it is part of the profession, and a bad reputation travels fast in a small industry that nobody wants. If the language is the barrier, we help: we can draft the Bulgarian email to your old accountant for you, so you are not stuck translating accounting terms yourself.

If your old accountant cannot give you the unpaid-invoices report, it is not the end of the world: we build the list from your bank statements and your invoices, but it takes longer. So ask for it early. If someone stalls, stops answering, or has vanished, that is unpleasant, but not the end of the world. A large part of the accounting history can be reconstructed: the filed returns and VAT ledgers exist at the tax authority, the account movements at your bank, the invoices with you and your counterparties. In other words, no single party holds the whole history alone, so one uncooperative person does not mean permanently lost data. Reconstruction takes longer and sometimes costs extra, especially if we have to rebuild a balance from scattered documents. The difference with us: we tell you how much it will cost and how long it will take before we start, not after, when it is already too late to choose another path.

One more thing few people know: by law, accounting registers and reports are kept for years. Switching accountants does not erase your company's history, and it does not release you from responsibility for past periods either. So switching is not a “reset” for your company, it is simply a change of who is responsible going forward.

How the migration to FreeMe.bg works

Our goal is that you are never left alone with the folders, at any point in the switch. The process is designed to take minutes of your time, not days:

• You sign up and fill in a short questionnaire about the company: activity, VAT status, assets, employees. It takes under ten minutes and does not require uploading anything up front.
• You receive a personal checklist of what to request and what to sign, including a ready draft of the letter to your old accountant, in Bulgarian, if you want it. You do not have to invent the wording or hunt for templates yourself.
• Our accountant reviews the received documents and verifies the numbers: balances, assets, VAT status, and payroll liabilities if you have employees. If something does not add up, we tell you before we take over responsibility, not after, so you know exactly what you are stepping into.
• You sign the power of attorney, we take over the deadlines. From that moment the filings are our job, and you go back to yours, without tracking calendars or due dates on your own.

Throughout this, you have visibility into exactly where the handover stands: which documents we are still waiting on, which have already arrived, and when we expect to be fully ready to take over your current obligations.

What about complex cases?

Honestly again: FreeMe.bg is built for simple companies, and we expect complex migrations to be the exception, not the norm. If the review surfaces accumulated problems: old discrepancies, an ongoing tax audit, a large volume of disorganized documents, we first sit down for a conversation with one of our accountants and decide together whether we are the right home for your company, and at what price. This is not an attempt to turn you away, it is a way of not taking on a commitment we cannot later deliver on properly.

One clarification matters: property cases are not a “complex case” for us. A company holding an apartment, with depreciation schedules and VAT credit from the purchase, is exactly the profile we are building FreeMe.bg for, and we see companies like that nearly every day. We are expecting you, even if you think your situation is unusual: to us it is probably familiar territory.

Useful next reads:

What annual closing looks like with FreeMe.bg
How VAT and tax filing work
When you need an expert and what is included

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