Purchased or provided a service to a non-resident. Is the act of acceptance and transfer of performed services mandatory?

It is a well-known fact that residents of Ukraine sign an act of acceptance and transfer of services performed. But the question arises, is such an act necessary if one of the parties is a non-resident, especially when the prepayment is 100%?

Let's see what the legislation tells us about this:

- Primary documents are the basis for accounting of economic transactions. A primary document is a document that contains information about a business transaction . Primary and consolidated accounting documents can be drawn up in paper or electronic form and must have the following mandatory details: name of the document (form); date of compilation ; the name of the company on behalf of which the document was drawn up; the content and scope of the economic operation , the unit of measurement of the economic operation; positions of persons responsible for the implementation of an economic operation and the correctness of its registration; personal signature or other data that make it possible to identify a person who participated in the implementation of an economic transaction ( Letter of the Federal Tax Service of Ukraine dated 31.03.2017 No. 6964/10/26-15-14-05-04-22 , referring to the Law "On Accounting and financial reporting in Ukraine" ).

- A properly drawn up invoice can be the basis for displaying in the accounting records the economic transaction for the supply of goods, works (services) without drawing up an act of acceptance and transfer only in the case of its payment , which is confirmed by relevant documents . Documents confirming payment can be a payment order, settlement check, cashier's check, settlement receipt, statement from a card account, receipt for a profitable cash order, etc. "clarification of the features of the use of primary documents in accounting).

Therefore, if the above-mentioned conditions for the invoice are fulfilled, there is no need to draw up an act of acceptance and transfer in order to reflect the business transaction in the accounting records. In addition, we recommend that all parties to the agreement sign the invoice - as a fact of confirmation of the provision of services, about which the necessary reference should be made in the Agreement.

But please note that the above conditions apply only to services, because the invoice, although it is included in the list of documents confirming the customs value of goods ( part 2 of article 53 of the Customs Code of Ukraine ), but it is actually a document according to which payment is made for the goods Invoices do not record a business transaction, order or permission to carry it out, but have only an informational nature. If we take into account the fact that we are talking about the import of goods (the customs clearance process itself) , then having only an invoice, some information will be unavailable . For example, we will not have the date of receipt of the goods, because the date of the invoice is usually earlier than the deadline for the cargo and customs declaration, as a result of which it is not known which NBU exchange rate to apply, which makes it impossible to determine the actual value of the goods, as well as the amount of customs payments and VAT. Based on this, only one invoice is not enough to sell goods.

The Draft Law "On the Use of Invoices in Works (Rendering of Services) Operations" dated October 13, 2022 was registered in the VRU, the purpose of which is to regulate relations related to invoices in the field of works (rendering of services), namely: to determine appropriate conceptual apparatus; to establish the principle of discretion during the circulation of invoices; recognize that under certain conditions an invoice can act as a contract; approve the mandatory details of the invoice; to provide ways of acceptance (acceptance) of the invoice; recognize it as a primary accounting document, etc. Because at present there are many questions and problems due to the weak regulatory framework in this area :

• complexity of accounting;
• the need to physically sign acts of completed works;
• the need to control receipt of acts of completed works signed by the counterparty and to account for them;
• obligation to submit documents in paper form to tax authorities to confirm the fact of providing services;
• the need for multiple forwarding of documents as a result of multi-episode coordination of the scope of work performed (services provided);
• lack of a single and universal approach to document processing;
• the need for the entrepreneur to prepare acts of an atypical form for the counterparty enterprise;
• misunderstanding on the part of foreign counterparties, reluctance to deal with Ukrainian contractors or the use of certain manipulations, which in turn leads to a decrease in foreign exchange earnings.

The calculations of the Center for Socio-Economic Research - CASE Ukraine are interesting: the costs for an average enterprise for drawing up acts of completed works (services rendered) reach 2,000-4,000 UAH per month , and on the scale of the economy, the excess costs of entrepreneurs reach up to 34 billion UAH per year (about 0 .6% of pre-war GDP).

Therefore, the Draft Law is very important and we hope for its speedy adoption, because it will allow:

• to introduce a unified and universal approach to document processing;
• simplify accounting and reduce the need for audits by tax authorities;
• reduce administrative, time and financial costs of business entities;
• ensure the growth of the economy due to the increase in foreign counterparties.

Therefore, signing an act of acceptance of the transfer of services with a non-resident (customer) with 100% prepayment is not mandatory, provided that the services are provided to the non-resident, the invoice is paid and it is properly executed, the invoice has the following essential conditions: the name of the document; date of compilation ; the name of the enterprise , the unit of measurement of the economic operation; positions of persons, personal signature. An unpaid invoice will be considered an offer of services and not an act of services rendered. But please note that the letters of the SFS and the MFU are only of a recommendatory nature, and are not legal norms, if you pay for services to a non-resident, you may come under the attention of the bank's currency control, in this case, after all, before the adoption of the Draft Law, we recommend concluding with by a non-resident (executor) an act of acceptance and transfer of services.

You can download the template of the Agreement on the provision of services (Ukrainian-English version) by following the link , having previously created it for your own needs. In addition to the contract, you can quickly create and download an invoice, an act of acceptance of the transfer of services, an additional agreement (price), an agreement on making changes .

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