Companies Act, 1973 (Act No. 61 of 1973)Chapter XI: Accounting and DisclosureAccounting Records284. Duty of company to keep accounting records |
| 1) | Every company shall keep in one of the official languages of the Republic such accounting records as are necessary fairly to present the state of affairs and business of the company and to explain the transactions and financial position of the trade or business of the company, including- |
| a) | records showing the assets and liabilities of the company; |
| b) | a register of fixed assets showing the respective dates of acquisition and the cost thereof, depreciation, if any, the date of any revaluation and the revalued amount, the respective dates of any disposals and the consideration received in respect thereof: Provided that in respect of fixed assets acquired before the commencement of this Act, a company may, as at the end of its first financial year after the said commencement, take an inventory of all fixed assets and make a realistic allocation of the total value of fixed assets as shown in the financial statements as at that date over the inventory of assets; |
| c) | records containing entries from day to day in sufficient detail of all cash received and paid out and of the matters in respect of which receipts and payments take place; |
| d) | where the trade or business of the company has involved dealings in goods, records of all goods sold and purchased and (except in the case of ordinary retail trade) records showing the goods and the buyers and the sellers thereof in sufficient detail to enable the nature of those goods and those buyers and sellers to be identified; and |
| e) | statements of the annual stocktaking. |
| 2) | The accounting records referred to in subsection (1) may be kept either by making entries in bound books or by recording the matters in question in any other manner, and where such records are not kept by making entries in bound books, adequate precautions shall be taken for guarding against falsification and facilitating its discovery. |
| 3) | The accounting records shall be kept at the registered office of the company or at such other place as the directors think fit and shall at all times be open to inspection by the directors and if such records are kept at a place outside the Republic, there shall be sent to and kept at a place in the Republic, and be at all times open to inspection by the directors, such financial statements and returns with respect to the business dealt with in those records as will disclose with reasonable accuracy the financial position of that business at intervals not exceeding twelve months, subject to section 285, and will enable the company's financial statements to be prepared in accordance with this Act. |
| 4) |
| a) | Any company which fails to comply with any provision of this section and every director or officer thereof who is a party to such failure or who fails to take all reasonable steps to secure compliance by the company with any such provision, shall be guilty of an offence. |
| b) | In any proceedings against any director or officer of a company in respect of an offence consisting of a failure to take reasonable steps to secure compliance by a company with the requirements of this section, it shall be a defence to prove that the accused had reasonable grounds for believing and did believe that a competent and reliable person was charged with the duty of seeing that those requirements were complied with and was in a position to discharge that duty and that the accused had no reason to believe that the said person had failed in any way to discharge that duty. |
| 5) | For the purposes of subsection (1), the expression "fixed assets" shall not include any assets acquired or used solely for the purposes of carrying on mining operations. |