01
First conversation
A meeting to understand the business, the timetable and the question raised. We say at the outset whether the file is one we can take on, and what will have to be checked before any answer.
Our services
What we do, and how
Our services fall into families: accounting and financial management, taxation and filings, business advice, banking file and accounting of financing, taxation of digital activities, and support for the projects that cross the corridor. They combine within a single file, handled by the same team.
Accounting and finance
Keeping the accounts, then making them speak
Bookkeeping is only worth doing if it produces information that can be used: a closing within the deadlines, readable reporting, a budget set against actual figures throughout the financial year.
We take charge of the day-to-day accounts of companies and sole traders: recording of documents, bank reconciliations, fixed assets, inventories, preparation of the annual accounts. The chart of accounts is built from the client’s actual business, and not taken from a generic template that would then have to be interpreted.
Beyond the legal obligation, we put in place the tools for running the business: budget, cash monitoring, a dashboard of the indicators that matter in the sector concerned. A variance between forecast and actual must be explained during the financial year, not discovered at the closing when it can no longer be corrected.
Accounting and closing
- Bookkeeping for companies and sole traders
- Recording and filing of supporting documents
- Fixed assets, depreciation and inventories
- Annual accounts and filing formalities
- Interim statements on request
- Taking over and bringing accounts in arrears up to date
Management and reporting
- Annual budget and revisions during the financial year
- Cash monitoring and schedule of payments
- Dashboard and indicators specific to the business
- Analysis of the variances between forecast and actual
- Periodic reporting for management or for the shareholders
- Statements prepared in French, Spanish or English
Taxation and filings
The obligations first, the regimes afterwards
A tax regime is not chosen before establishing where the activity is really carried on, who directs it and what it produces. We start from the obligations, then we examine the schemes that may apply.
We prepare the periodic and annual returns of companies and individuals: corporate income tax, Canary Islands General Indirect Tax (IGIC), withholding taxes, information returns, and the obligations attached to transactions with mainland Spain and abroad. The calendar of deadlines is kept by the firm and the client knows what will be filed before it is filed.
We then examine how the schemes of the Canary Islands economic and tax regime apply — the Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC), the Reserve for Investments in the Canary Islands (RIC), the Canary Islands investment deduction (DIC), the free zone and IGIC — beginning with what may make them inapplicable. Some of the projects put to us are not eligible: better to establish that before setting up a structure.
Returns and obligations
- Corporate income tax and payments on account
- IGIC: periodic and summary returns
- Withholding tax and information returns
- Transactions with mainland Spain and abroad
- Returns of directors and private individuals
- Calendar of deadlines kept by the firm
Tax study and review
- Tax review of a company before or after the closing
- Conditions of access to the schemes of the Canary Islands regime
- ZEC: admitted activities, requirements and exclusions
- Reserve for Investments (RIC) and investment deductions
- Questions of residence and permanent establishment
- Replies to requests from the tax authorities and handling of audits
- Written notes with the statutory references cited
Business advice
Deciding with figures that can be defended
A business plan is not a presentation exercise. It is a costed hypothesis that must stand up before a bank, a partner or an authority, and be corrected as soon as reality departs from it.
We build the financial forecasts of a project from its operating data: volumes, prices, payment terms, working capital requirement, financing. The assumptions are written down and kept separate from the calculations, so that a third party can discuss them one by one rather than challenge the result as a whole.
We also work on internal organisation: the flow of documents, separation of duties, approval of expenditure, choice of management tools. A company that grows usually loses control of its administration before it loses control of its margins, and putting things back in order costs more than setting them up.
Projects and financing
- Business plan and funding pack for the bank
- Financial forecasts and sensitivity scenarios
- Feasibility study of a project or an investment
- Financing plan and working capital requirement
- Costing of set-up and running expenses
- Critical review of a plan drawn up by a third party
Organisation and control
- Administrative and financial organisation
- Management accounting and costing
- Flow of documents and written internal procedures
- Choice and configuration of management tools
- Training of the client’s administrative team
- Preparation of the information requested by an auditor
International support
A project that crosses the corridor
Setting up a company in the Canary Islands to operate towards West Africa, or establishing in Spain from Mauritania, means dealing with two administrations that do not ask for the same documents on the same dates.
Support begins with the form: which structure, in which country, with what effective management and what resources on the ground. Then come incorporation, registration for tax and social security, the preparation of the banking file, and then the ongoing filing obligations, which are the longest part and the most often underestimated.
We find and coordinate the local correspondents required — notary, lawyer, employment adviser, accountant on the ground — and we remain the client’s single point of contact. Where the framework is changing, as in Mauritania, we distinguish what is settled from what needs to be verified at the date of the transaction.
Establishment and structuring
- Choice of legal form and country of establishment
- Company formation and registrations
- Tax and social security registration, identification numbers
- Pack of documents for opening a bank account
- Subsidiary, branch or permanent establishment: review of the options
- First filing obligations after the set-up
Support along the corridor
- Finding and coordinating local correspondents
- Liaison with the authorities in both countries
- Accounting treatment of import and export transactions
- Working notes in French, Arabic and Spanish
- On-site visits when the file calls for them
- Monitoring of regulatory developments along the corridor
Banking file and financing
Preparing the file the bank will read
A business account is not opened on the strength of a request but on the strength of a file: the bank must identify the company and the person who controls it, and refrain from acting where it cannot.
We put together the file the bank asks for: up-to-date articles of association and directors’ powers, the partners’ documents, the person controlling the company, the source of funds. It is assembled before the appointment rather than improvised at the counter, the more so where the partners do not reside in Spain, which institutions treat as a risk factor.
We then document the trace the account and the borrowing leave in the books: evidence of the transfers, guarantees given and received, statements called for by the lender. The firm acts neither as agent for any institution nor as a credit intermediary, it never holds client funds, and the decision to open an account or to lend rests with the institution.
Account and compliance
- Preparation of the file required before the relationship begins
- Partners’ documents and directors’ powers
- Identification of the company’s beneficial owner
- Documented evidence of the source of funds
- Certificate of non-residence and monitoring of its renewal
- Coordination of legalisation and translation of documents
Financing and flows
- Acceptance of the account for payments to the authorities
- Entries and evidence of transfers received and made
- Accounting treatment of guarantees given and received
- Effect of financing on the accounts and the forecasts
- Management statements required by a lending institution
- Returns relating to foreign accounts and cross-border flows
Digital activities
A remote activity always has a location
Where a service is sold at a distance, the first question is not the rate but the place: each transaction is located according to the customer’s status and place of establishment, before it is invoiced.
We classify each supply before invoicing it: service supplied by electronic means, licence, data processing, advice, business or private customer, established in the archipelago, in the rest of the Union or outside it. It is that classification which determines the tax that applies, contract by contract, and not a general rule applied to the whole business.
Under the Canary Islands schemes, the examination looks first at the entry conditions: effective management, a resident director, employment and investment. The list of admitted activities is closed, online retail trade does not appear on it, and an intangible acquired from third parties opens the Reserve only within initial investment.
Place of supply and returns
- Classification of services supplied by electronic means
- Separate treatment of businesses and private individuals
- One Stop Shop: registration and periodic returns
- Distance sales of imported goods and the import scheme
- Reverse charge of IGIC on services from non-established suppliers
- Recovery of the tax borne in mainland Spain
Schemes and invoicing
- Eligibility of a digital activity under the annex to the law
- Company resources in the archipelago, not the customers’ country
- Descriptive report and any later change of activity
- Software and intangibles in the Reserve for Investments
- Technical file for research and innovation projects
- Invoicing systems and the move to electronic invoicing
Our method
Always in the same order
We work in the same way for a small company established in Las Palmas and for a cross-border project. What changes is the time spent on each stage, not the order they come in.
02
Diagnosis
Examination of the documents: accounts, articles of association, contracts, returns filed. We look first for the constraints — obligations in arrears, conditions not met — before considering any solution at all.
03
Plan of work
A written note: the scope of the engagement, the conditions to be met, the timetable, the fees and what remains the client’s responsibility. It is approved before the work begins.
04
Follow-up
Execution and regular reviews. The filing calendar is kept by the firm; the decisions that belong to the client are flagged to them in good time, not once the deadline has passed.
Organisation of the work
Working remotely without losing contact
Some of our clients are not in Las Palmas. The organisation of the firm takes account of this: documents circulate in digital form, meetings are held remotely when travelling adds nothing, and the file stays readable for both sides.
The client portal is a project under development. It will be opened in stages, as the functions become ready and proven; we will not announce a date until we are sure of meeting it. Until then, exchanges take place by the means described here.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions about our services
Yes. Some of our files concern companies and sole traders established in the Canary Islands, with no African dimension. Accounting, taxation and business advice are provided to them on the same terms and by the same team.
Yes, after examining what exists. We first establish the real extent of the delay and the list of the missing returns, then a timetable for regularisation. The consequences of a late filing are indicated before the work begins, including when they are unwelcome.
By a written quotation, issued after the diagnosis. Recurring engagements are covered by a periodic fixed fee, one-off engagements by a price per file. Additional work is announced and accepted before it is undertaken, never invoiced after the event.
No. We check whether the conditions of a scheme are met, and we say so when they are not. Admission is a matter for the competent authorities and bodies: no firm can give an assurance of it in advance.
In French, Arabic, Spanish and English. Documents intended for an authority are prepared in the language it requires; working notes are provided in the client’s own language, so that they can be read without an intermediary.
Not necessarily. The first conversation and the diagnosis take place remotely. Certain formalities require a signature before a notary or an appearance in person: we indicate which ones, and what can be done under a power of attorney.
No. The law requires the institution to identify the company, the person who controls it and the source of funds, then to refrain from acting if it cannot. We assemble the documents and respond to its requests, whether to a Spanish bank (Santander, CaixaBank, BBVA) or to the Spanish branch of a European bank such as Revolut Business; the firm acts neither as agent nor as credit intermediary and never holds client funds.
It depends on the customer, and each contract is classified separately. For a business customer in the rest of the Union, the invoice carries no Canary Islands tax and the purchaser accounts for its own tax. For a private individual, the tax is due in their country and may be declared through the One Stop Shop, under the scheme for businesses not established in the Union’s VAT territory.
First conversation
Let us talk about your project
Describe your situation and your timetable to us. We will tell you what is possible, on what conditions, and what has to be checked before any commitment is made.