What's new in the annual reporting environment?

Few updates have been made to the e-Business Register portal this year as well, regarding the preparation and submission of the annual report. The additions are mainly related to the extension of the rights to submit the report electronically, for example, if the association temporarily does not have a board, or the annual report has not yet been approved by all parties by the end of deadline.

Compared to last year, in the environment of submitting annual reports, there is one more significant additional possibility that the report can be submitted by the deadline even if it has not been approved by the general meeting or shareholders. However, it is a temporary solution, which means that a report must be resubmitted on the e-Business Register portal as soon as the general meeting or shareholders have approved it. The described new possibility can be used, if necessary, by: public limited company, private limited company, a non-profit organization, a political party, a profit-making cooperative, a land improvement cooperative, and a trade union. The possibility of submitting an unapproved annual report does not extend to the apartment association .

Another update, which is also related to the rights to submit the annual report, concerns private companies that do not have a board at the time of submitting the report. In this case, too, a possibility has been created to submit the report electronically. For example, in the event of the death of the only member of the board, the report can be submitted by the council or, in its absence, by the majority or sole shareholder of the private limited company.

Similar to the auditor, a revisor (for example in the case of profit-making cooperatives) who is registered as a revisor in the Business Register can now prepare and sign their revisor report electronically in the portal. In this case, the revisor will automatically have access to see and approve the revisor report being prepared, and uploading previously signed PDF files is no longer necessary.

E-äriregistri klienditoelt on üksjagu küsitud elektrooniliste võimaluste kohta likvideerimisaruande koostamiseks. Nimetatud võimalus on sellest aastast olemas, kui registrit on teavitatud likvideerimisotsusest, ehk ühingu staatuseks on märgitud „likvideerimisel“. Likvideerimisaruannet saab seega koostama hakata vaid likvideerimisel olev ühing, sest süsteem kontrollib staatust e-äriregistri andmetest ja teistel juhtudel antud aruandeliiki valikus ei ole. Samuti saab koostada ja registrile esitada likvideerimise lõpparuande, mille eelduseks on registrile esitatud likvideerimisaruanne.

The customer support of the e-Business Register has been asked a few times about electronic options for preparing a liquidation report. This possibility is available from this year, if the register has been notified of the liquidation decision, i.e. the status of the association is indicated as "in liquidation". Therefore, only the company in liquidation can start preparing the liquidation report, because the system checks the status from the data of the e-Business Register, and in other cases this type of report is not available. A final liquidation report can also be prepared and submitted to the register, which requires a liquidation report submitted to the register.

A rule has also been added that checks that the share capital reflected in the annual report is equal to the share capital entered in the business register.

In addition to authentication, annual reports can now also be signed in the e-Business Register portal with Smart-ID.

As for the already submitted financial year reports, which are expected from almost 290 thousand associations by June 30 this year - from October 1, 2022 everyone can view them for free on the e-business register portal. From the mentioned date, the Business Register data became free open data.

We also recommend to read guidance material regarding the submission of the annual report.