₹1,499 a month is where professionally kept books start for a Mumbai business with LegalX India. The retainer buys a dedicated accountant, ledgers kept current, monthly bank reconciliation, and statements you can hand a lender without apologising first.
What the price does not show is why accounting in this city needs its own page. Mumbai books carry a state layer: a GSTIN beginning with 27, two separate profession tax certificates administered on mahagst.gov.in, and premises proofs complicated by leave and licence housing. Ignore that layer and tidy national bookkeeping still produces Maharashtra notices.
What does ₹1,499 a month actually buy a Mumbai business?
The base retainer runs a fixed monthly cycle:
- Your sales, purchases and expenses reach us as statements, exports or photographed bills.
- Every entry is recorded and coded, and the GST treatment is checked against your state code 27 GSTIN.
- The bank is reconciled line by line, and mismatches are chased the same week they appear.
- You receive a profit and loss account, a balance sheet, and a note listing what falls due next.
Pricing moves with transaction volume and payroll headcount, and the quote is fixed in writing before we begin. The scope itself mirrors our complete accounting and bookkeeping guide for India; what this page adds is the Maharashtra layer that sits on top of it.
Do the GST and payroll thresholds catch your firm?
Two threshold sets decide how heavy your calendar gets, and we check both at onboarding:
- GST registration applies in Maharashtra from ₹40 lakh turnover for goods and ₹20 lakh for services, and registration itself costs nothing on the portal.
- EPF applies from 20 employees and ESI from 10, here as everywhere else in India.
- A company owes its own profession tax enrolment from day one, whatever the turnover.
- The Maharashtra Labour Welfare Fund takes small half yearly contributions once staff join, in June and December.
A fund consultant in BKC tends to cross the ₹20 lakh service line faster than expected, because a few advisory mandates get there on their own. Crossing it changes the brief overnight. Invoices need GST workings, input credit needs tracking, and the books must stand behind returns rather than just an income tax filing.
How does the Maharashtra layer sit on your books?
Two officer cadres run in parallel. GST filings happen on the national portal. But every Mumbai registration is assigned either to a Maharashtra state GST officer under the Maharashtra Goods and Services Tax Department or to a Central GST officer in the Mumbai zone. Either can raise clarifications, and either can order physical verification of your principal place of business.
Then comes profession tax, the piece outsiders most often get wrong. PTEC is the enrolment certificate: the entity's own flat ₹2,500 liability, falling due each year with nothing further to file. Directors and LLP partners each carry a personal enrolment on top. PTRC is the separate certificate an employer holds to take profession tax out of pay, at ₹200 a month per liable employee and ₹300 in February. Women drawing up to ₹25,000 a month sit outside that cut, a Maharashtra choice in force since 2023. Both certificates run under the Maharashtra State Tax on Professions, Trades, Callings and Employments Act, 1975, and both live on mahagst.gov.in.
The working test is short. A BKC consultant with no staff needs enrolment alone. The month the first analyst joins the payroll, the employer certificate enters the calendar, and the books must show the workings behind every deposit.
Which papers and proofs matter most for Mumbai books?
Ledgers are only half the file. The proof that undoes more Mumbai registrations than any ledger error is the premises. Much of the city works from space held under a leave and licence agreement, often inside a cooperative housing society. A GST officer verifying the principal place of business wants one consistent chain:
- the leave and licence agreement, which Maharashtra law insists must be registered, a duty resting on the landlord, with e-registration available
- the licensor's NOC permitting commercial use of the premises
- the society's position, since a housing society that objects can unwind the other two papers
- the everyday records behind the ledgers: bank statements, sales invoices and purchase bills
A Zaveri Bazaar jewellery wholesaler adds a different pressure: volume. Hundreds of high value purchase entries a month leave no room for lazy coding, and one wrongly coded parcel distorts both the margin and the GST workings.
Which deadlines shape the Mumbai accounting calendar?
Most of the year runs to a rhythm, and the rhythm is what a retainer exists to hold:
| Obligation | Cycle | The figure that matters |
|---|---|---|
| GSTR-3B under QRMP | Quarterly | Due on the 22nd after each quarter for Maharashtra filers |
| Profession tax enrolment, PTEC | Annual | Flat ₹2,500 by the annual due date, no return to file |
| Profession tax employer certificate, PTRC | Monthly or annual by prior year liability | ₹200 per liable employee, ₹300 in February |
| Labour Welfare Fund | Half yearly | Paid in June and December |
TDS and the annual accounts sit on top of this calendar. The point of a managed book is that no one in your office has to remember any of it.
What trips Mumbai businesses up in their accounts?
The same failures repeat across the city, and they are rarely arithmetic.
The commonest is treating profession tax as one certificate. A company takes the entity enrolment at incorporation, then finds out years later that every director owed a personal one too, and that the employer certificate never got taken when hiring began. February is the next classic: eleven months at ₹200 and one at ₹300, so payroll set to a flat figure ends the year ₹100 short per employee.
Premises mismatches surface at the worst possible moment, during an officer's physical verification, when the agreement, the NOC and the society tell three different stories. Employers who assume EPFO and ESIC are the whole picture miss the Labour Welfare Fund months entirely. And for goods moving within the state, note one hedged point: Maharashtra applies a relaxed threshold for e-way bills on movement within the state, and we confirm the current position before your books rely on it.
Why LegalX India for your Mumbai books?
Because this desk already works both sides of the state layer every month, for clients ranging from fund advisors in BKC to trading houses in Fort and brands in Lower Parel. More than 15,000 customers have used LegalX India, and the accounting work runs under CA and CS oversight rather than a data entry pool. The 4.8 Google rating comes from that discipline, not from advertising.
Everything happens online: ledgers in shared software, GST on the national portal, profession tax on mahagst.gov.in. Statements land by the 10th of the following month with a note on what falls due next. Share your number and an accountant, not a salesperson, calls you back within 30 minutes to scope the work.