The regulations governing the accounting records to be kept by enterprises in Spain are contained in the Commercial Code, which requires all enterprises to keep orderly accounts that are suitable for their business activities, to keep a book of inventories and balances and to keep a journal, without prejudice to the requirements of special laws or provisions.
Business entities must also keep a minutes book or books in which all the resolutions adopted by the annual and special shareholders’ meetings and by other collective bodies of the enterprise must be recorded.
With regard to the formal requirements applicable to accounting records, the Commercial Code states that enterprises must submit the statutory books to the Mercantile Registry in the place in which their registered office is located, so that they can be certified and stamped before being used.
Book entries can be made by any suitable procedure on separate sheets, which are subsequently bound sequentially in order to make up the statutory books, which must be legalized within four months from year-end.
The aforementioned formal requirements also apply to the registered shares, register book of corporations and partnerships limited by shares and to the register of shareholders of limited liability companies. All these registers may be kept in electronic format.
