Every date your finance year runs on.

Founders rarely get caught out by things nobody could have known. They get caught out by an advance tax instalment in the same week as payroll, an LUT that expired in April, a software renewal that nobody remembered was annual, or an audit that started in June with books that weren't ready.

All of those are on a calendar somewhere. Usually it's in your CA's head, which is fine until the week it matters for cash, or until the CA is waiting on you for something they needed a fortnight ago.

This template puts the recurring dates in one place, so a founder can see the year, and whoever runs finance can put owners and reminders against the ones that apply. It takes about twenty minutes to make it yours, and it is the cheapest piece of finance infrastructure a company can have.

The first three weeks of an Indian company's month are busier than the rest, and most of the pressure comes from statutory dates that don't move.

Read as a cash pattern rather than a compliance list, it explains a lot. Between the 7th and the 20th a company pays TDS, PF, ESIC and GST, and then payroll at the end. For most startups that is the tightest fortnight of every month, which is exactly why a weekly cash forecast pays for itself.

The annual sheet lays out the fixed points. A few are worth knowing even if your CA handles them.

• ·April: file the Letter of Undertaking if you export goods or services, because it is needed for each financial year and a missed renewal means paying IGST and claiming it back later.
• ·April: salary increments usually take effect, which raises PF and gratuity costs as well as salaries, so budget at fully loaded cost.
• ·30 April: deposit TDS deducted in March, which is the one month that doesn't follow the 7th.
• ·15 June, 15 September, 15 December, 15 March: advance tax instalments for companies expecting to be profitable, cumulative at 15%, 45%, 75% and 100%.
• ·By 30 September: the annual general meeting, usually within six months of the year end, with audited accounts approved before it.
• ·After the AGM: annual filings with the Registrar, including financial statements and the annual return.
• ·30 November: the usual last date to claim input tax credit for the previous financial year, or the annual return date if earlier.
• ·January to March: build next year's operating plan, then close the year properly with accruals, provisions and the ESOP and gratuity valuations your auditor will ask for.

Two of those regularly cost companies real money. The LUT renewal, which ties up cash in refunds when missed. And the input credit deadline, which is simply lost if a supplier's invoice was never claimed in time.

Put the annual items on a cash timeline and the year has a shape most plans ignore.

April is expensive: increments start, annual software renewals often fall here, and the LUT and registrations need attention. June, September, December and March carry advance tax for profitable companies. May and June carry audit and professional fees. March carries year-end payments and the final tax instalment, in the same month that many businesses are chasing collections to close the year.

None of it is large individually. Together, the annual items in a typical small company add up to more than a month of ordinary costs, and they arrive in four or five specific months. A plan that spreads them evenly across twelve will be wrong in exactly those months.

The calendar is not fixed. Crossing certain thresholds adds obligations, and they arrive quietly, usually in a month when everyone is busy hiring.

• ·Headcount: PF generally applies once an establishment has 20 or more employees, and ESIC once it has 10 or more in most states. Both are due from the date the threshold is crossed, not from when someone notices.
• ·A funding round: information rights in the shareholders' agreement add reporting deadlines, and the round itself brings allotment, filings and, where investors are foreign, exchange reporting.
• ·Crossing turnover thresholds: e-invoicing, TDS and audit obligations change with size, and the thresholds move from time to time.
• ·Starting to export: the LUT becomes an annual April item, and input credit refunds become a recurring process rather than an occasional one.
• ·Becoming profitable: advance tax instalments start, and four dates appear in the year that were previously irrelevant.
• ·A second state: professional tax, and sometimes registrations, follow the state rather than the company.

That last one surprises people. Hiring a salesperson who works from another state can create obligations in that state. Worth a question to your CA before the offer letter rather than after.

1. 01Go through both sheets and mark what applies. A company with no exports, no employees above the ESIC threshold or no profits yet can ignore several lines.
2. 02Copy the ones that apply into Your calendar, with an owner for each. Most will be your CA or payroll provider; a few are yours.
3. 03Add your own dates: payroll, board meetings, investor reporting deadlines from the shareholders' agreement, lease renewals, insurance, major contract renewals.
4. 04Set reminders in whatever calendar your team actually uses, a few days before each date rather than on it.
5. 05Record when each item was last done, so a gap is visible at a glance.
6. 06Review it once a quarter, because registrations change as the company grows: crossing the PF or ESIC headcount thresholds adds lines.

The single most useful column is the owner. Most missed deadlines in small companies are not misunderstood rules; they are items that two people each assumed the other was handling.

Most of these items are your CA's or payroll provider's work. The calendar isn't there to check up on them; it's there so both sides know what the other needs and when.

Almost every missed date in a small company traces back to information arriving late: bank statements not shared, an invoice not recorded, a new employee not communicated to payroll, a supplier's GSTIN never collected. The deadline is your provider's, but the inputs are yours.

So it's worth agreeing three things once, and writing them into the owner column. By which working day you send what they need each month. By which working day they close the books. And which two or three items they'll flag to you directly rather than handling silently, which for most companies means anything overdue and anything that changes because the company crossed a threshold.

Those three agreements turn a list of dates into a working process, and they cost one conversation.