How to Change Accountants in Georgia: Steps and Cost

To change accountants in Georgia, you move your rs.ge access and your records from one accountant to another, and the new one checks what was already filed before taking over. During the handover, a declaration missed around the 15th is penalised automatically, and an error the previous accountant made stays your liability with the Revenue Service. This post covers the handover steps, when a change is justified, the timing and the cost.

How to Change Accountants in Georgia: Step by Step

A change of accountant in Georgia runs in six steps, in this order:

1. Choose the new accountant and get the scope in writing. Ask what the fee includes and what is billed separately, who is liable for a filing error, and who files if your contact is unavailable in a deadline week.
2. Agree which accountant files the next declaration, so the 15th is covered during the handover.
3. Your current accountant releases the rs.ge access and hands over your records, before the new accountant takes over anything.
4. The new accountant reads through what was filed and tells you which months are missing and which declarations need correcting. Do not accept a new accountant who takes over without reading the history.
5. The gaps are closed. Missed months are filed one by one and wrong declarations are corrected.
6. Monthly filing resumes with the new accountant, and the next declaration goes in before the 15th.

The backup question in step 1 matters most with a sole practitioner, who is the only person holding your filing history. A firm has more than one person who can pick up your file, and it usually has a procedure for covering deadline weeks when your contact is away.

When to Change Your Accountant in Georgia

Raise a single missed deadline with the accountant directly before you consider a change. These repeated problems justify changing accountants:

• Reverse VAT on services bought from abroad is missed again after you raised it.
• Written questions get vague or late answers more than once.
• A SARAS reporting deadline or the VAT registration threshold reaches you with no warning beforehand.
• The accountant cannot be reached in a week when a deadline falls.
• Nothing is confirmed in writing, so you hold no record of what was filed.
• The accountant resists handing over your rs.ge access or your records.

Declarations go in under your taxpayer name, so the Revenue Service looks to you for them and not to the accountant who submitted them. Staying with an accountant who repeats the same error leaves that risk open. A change has a known cost, because the new accountant counts and prices the catch-up work before it starts.

A change of accountant is not the only option for the simplest businesses. An individual entrepreneur with Small Business Status, no VAT registration and a handful of invoices a month can file alone through rs.ge, which takes about twenty minutes a month for that profile.

What the Old Accountant Must Hand Over

Your rs.ge credentials and your records are yours, not the accountant’s. The handover covers these items:

Item	What it is	Why the new accountant needs it
rs.ge access	The username and password for your taxpayer account	To read past declarations and file new ones
Confirmation of filings	A written record of what was filed for each month	To compare with what the rs.ge account shows
Invoices issued and received	The tax source documents behind each transaction	Each transaction is recorded against its document
Bank statements	The date each payment landed and its currency	Foreign income is converted at the rate for that date
Contracts	The agreements with clients and service providers	They support the invoices
Accounting records	The accounts of income and expenses	An LLC keeps full accounts from incorporation

rs.ge Access

Every declaration is filed through rs.ge, the Revenue Service portal, and the taxpayer cabinet and its forms are in Georgian. The login is a username and password sent by SMS after tax registration, and there is no self-service sign-up. A taxpayer account can also be set up so that an authorised person acts on it, which is how an accountant files without you logging in each month.

If the login has been lost, it can be recovered. That generally takes a formal request or a visit, not an online reset, so ask for the credentials at the start of the handover.

Invoices, Bank Statements and Contracts

Article 72 of the Tax Code of Georgia requires every invoice and receipt to be dated and made in at least two identical copies, one for each party. An invoice missing from the old accountant’s files should therefore still exist with your client or supplier. It cannot be written again afterwards from memory or from a bank statement alone.

Article 72 also sets a minimum retention period of three years for these documents, counted from 31 December of the year each one belongs to. A receipt dated November 2025 stays on file until at least 31 December 2028, so the files for those years move with you to the new accountant.

What the New Accountant Should Review Before Taking Over

Before filing a first month, the new accountant checks everything filed so far against these points:

• Every month has a declaration. A month with no income still needs one, and a skipped zero declaration is penalised like any other late filing.
• Each declaration was filed for the correct reporting month.
• Foreign income was converted to lari at the National Bank of Georgia’s official rate on the date each payment landed, not on the invoice date and not at a monthly average.
• Services bought from outside Georgia were declared with 18% reverse VAT, which applies even without a VAT registration.
• Each declaration was followed by a payment that shows as received. A payment that was sent and does not show usually traces back to a payer name or tax ID entered at the bank differently from the registered one.
• Every declaration the business owes was filed. An LLC files a corporate tax declaration every month, including months with no distribution. A VAT-registered business files a separate VAT declaration, and an employer files payroll and pension declarations.
• Upcoming obligations are identified. A business must register for VAT when its taxable turnover over any continuous 12-month period goes above ₾100,000, and companies in a SARAS reporting category file annual financial statements by 1 October.

A declaration that was already submitted can be corrected. Correcting a wrong figure early tends to leave less interest and a smaller penalty exposure than correcting it late.

How to Avoid a Missed Declaration Around the 15th

The monthly declaration is due by the 15th of the month after the one being reported, and a change of accountant does not move that date. Penalties for a late declaration apply automatically once the 15th has passed, with no grace period. Late filing and late payment are penalised separately, and interest accrues daily on any unpaid balance.

Four steps keep the deadline covered:

1. Start the change in the days after a declaration has been filed. A switch that starts on 16 October and takes two weeks is finished by 30 October, which leaves the new accountant until 15 November to file October’s declaration.
2. If the change starts close to a deadline, agree in writing which accountant files the declaration that is due. Either the current accountant files it before releasing the access, or the new one confirms that it will be filed on time.
3. Ask for a confirmation once the declaration is submitted, then make the payment, because filing the declaration does not pay the tax. The payment is made in lari from a Georgian bank account under the single treasury code 101001000.
4. Have the declaration filed a few days before the 15th and not on the day, so that a problem with the portal can still be solved in time.

How Long It Takes to Change Accountants

With us, most switches complete within 1 to 2 weeks. In that time we take over the rs.ge access, read through what was filed and tell you which months are missing and what needs correcting.

Two things can add time:

• Arrears. Filing missed months comes on top of the switch, and it depends on how many months are missing and on how quickly the invoices and bank statements for them are collected.
• A lost rs.ge login, because recovery generally goes through a formal request or a visit.

After the switch, the monthly work on your side takes most of our clients 20 to 30 minutes in total, which covers uploading invoices, bank statements and contracts, paying the tax and answering our questions.

What It Costs to Change Accountants

Accountants in Georgia charge for unfiled past months separately from the ongoing monthly fee. With us, missed months are filed through accounting restoration at ₾270 per month of arrears, and the total is counted and priced before any work starts. A business with nothing missing starts directly on a monthly package.

Situation	Catch-up work	Monthly package after the switch
Nothing missing, not registered for VAT	None	Lite, from ₾180
Nothing missing, VAT-registered or with employees	None	Business, from ₾315
4 months never filed, not registered for VAT	4 × ₾270 = ₾1,080	Lite, from ₾180
6 months never filed, VAT-registered	6 × ₾270 = ₾1,620	Business, from ₾315

The package price follows your transaction count. Lite costs ₾180 a month for up to 10 transactions, ₾315 for 11 to 30 and ₾495 for 31 to 60, and its first quarter is paid upfront, which is ₾540 at the lowest band. Business costs ₾315, ₾495 and ₾855 for the same bands. All prices exclude 18% VAT.

The fee covers the accounting work. Tax, interest and penalties for the missed months are paid by you to the Revenue Service, and we confirm the amount due and the payment details. From the first month we file, liability for a filing error we make sits with us.