Pakistan Bookkeeping & Records

General reference only. This skill is general tax/accounting reference material for AI-assisted workflows. It has not been reviewed for any specific person's facts, documents, elections, deadlines, residency, filing status, or local procedures. Do not rely on it to file, pay, amend, or take a tax position without review by a qualified professional in the relevant jurisdiction.

Section 1 — Quick Reference

Field	Value
Country	Pakistan
Currency	PKR
Tax authority	Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) — IRIS
Core records	Income/receipts, expenses, bank statements, invoices, asset register
IT exporter must keep	Bank credit advices / PRC (Proceeds Realization Certificate) for every foreign remittance
Retention	Generally 6 years (verify s.174 Income Tax Ordinance)
Skill version	1.0

Section 2 — What to keep (Tier 1)

• Income: invoices to clients, platform statements (Upwork/Fiverr), bank credits. For exporters, the banking-channel remittance evidence (PRC/credit advice) is essential — it is the basis of the IT-export concession (pk-it-export-tax).
• Expenses: vendor bills, utility/rent receipts, equipment purchases (for the asset register/depreciation), subscriptions.
• Bank: full-year statements for all accounts (PKR and foreign-currency/USD).
• Tax: prior returns, wealth statement, withholding tax certificates (these support adjustments/refunds).

Section 3 — Invoicing & sales tax records

• A business individual issues invoices with their NTN. If registered for sales tax on services (provincial) or goods (FBR), keep tax invoices and the input/output tax record (see pakistan-sales-tax).

Section 4 — Worked example

A freelancer keeps: monthly Upwork statements, the bank's PRC for each USD remittance, a simple expense sheet (laptop, internet, software), and the year-end bank statement. This supports the IT-export final tax and the IRIS return + wealth statement.

Section 10 — Prohibitions

• NEVER let an IT exporter discard remittance/PRC evidence — the concession depends on it.
• NEVER mix domestic and export income without separating the records.
• NEVER state the retention period without verifying s.174 of the Income Tax Ordinance.

Disclaimer

Informational only; not advice. Verify record/retention rules with the FBR. All outputs must be reviewed and signed off by a qualified Pakistani tax practitioner. Maintained at openaccountants.com.