Certificates computed from the books, and frozen when signed.

A bank asks for a net worth certificate on Thursday. The figure has to come from somewhere, and in most firms it comes from a spreadsheet somebody built last year, updated by hand, signed because the deadline arrived.

The figure is computed from the books, not typed

Audcrix builds a certificate from the client's own synced books. The draft recomputes every time it is opened, so a figure can never be stale against the ledgers it claims to come from. Seven kinds are supported:

• Net worth certificate
• Turnover certificate
• Certificate of utilisation of funds
• Working capital certificate
• Debtors and creditors certificate, with ageing
• Statutory dues certificate
• Form No. 146 — payment to a non-resident, the form that replaced 15CB

Net worth follows the section, not a convention

For a company, net worth is computed on section 2(57) of the Companies Act, 2013, as amended by the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2017 — and the exclusions are applied by the engine rather than remembered by the signer. A reserve created out of revaluation of assets is excluded. So is one created out of amalgamation, and one created out of a write-back of depreciation. Securities premium is included. Each of those carries the reason on the row, quoting the sub-clause it comes from.

Where the client is not a company, the section does not apply, and the certificate says so: net worth is the owners' funds.

Every figure shows what it was built from

Each certificate states its basis in its own words. Turnover is revenue from operations as presented in the Statement of Profit and Loss, Schedule III, Division I. Working capital is current assets and current liabilities as classified in the Balance Sheet. Statutory dues are the ledgers the same classifier picks up that the section 43B engine uses — so the certificate and the tax audit cannot disagree about what a statutory due is.

Ageing can be presented on the bank buckets — up to 90 days, 91 to 180, 181 days to a year, over a year — or on Schedule III's own ageing schedules, where receivables run from under six months to over three years and payables from under a year.

It refuses to issue when it should

A partner issues the certificate with the UDIN. The issue is refused while any item remains undecided, or where funds are over-utilised. A certificate that would be wrong does not get signed because the deadline arrived.

Issued means frozen

The moment a certificate is issued it becomes a snapshot. A later sync can change the books; it can never change a certificate somebody has already relied on. The register keeps every one, and the PDF carries the certificate and its annexure together, so the recipient sees the figure and its composition in the same document.