Balance Sheet Format as per Schedule III — and a free builder that produces it

Which format applies to you

India does not have one financial-statement format. It has three live ones, and which applies is decided by the legal form of the entity, not by its size or by what its accounting software produces. If you are still choosing a structure, our comparison of a company, an LLP and a firm sets out the wider consequences.

The Guidance Notes are not a softer option. They are recommendatory in form, but under ICAI's clarification on the authority of its documents a member performing an attest function must examine whether the recommendations have been followed, document the rationale for any departure, and consider whether the departure needs to be reported. Since the March 2026 announcement uses the words "shall be applicable", a departure is in practice a reportable matter.

What changed, and when it bites

Three separate changes are in play, and they are frequently conflated. Here is the actual sequence.

Schedule III Division I — Balance Sheet format

This is the complete face of the balance sheet under Schedule III of the Companies Act, 2013, in Schedule III's own wording and order, as amended in 2021. Four columns are prescribed: Particulars, Note No., figures as at the end of the current reporting period, and figures as at the end of the previous reporting period.

Five details in that table that catch people out

• The bottom line is the single word TOTAL. "Total equity and liabilities" and "Total assets" are the Division II (Ind AS) captions. A Division I balance sheet that says "Total Assets" is using the wrong division's wording.
• The fixed asset caption changed in 2021. It used to read "(a) Fixed assets — (i) Tangible assets". It now reads "Property, Plant and Equipment and Intangible assets" with four sub-items, and capital work-in-progress sits inside that block rather than as a separate head.
• Current maturities of long-term debt moved. They were an item under other current liabilities; since 2021 they are disclosed separately under short-term borrowings. The old line under other current liabilities is marked "Omitted".
• Security deposits moved too, out of long-term loans and advances and into other non-current assets.
• Rounding off is now compulsory, and it is keyed to total income, not turnover. Below ₹100 crore of total income, figures must be rounded to the nearest hundreds, thousands, lakhs or millions. At ₹100 crore or above, to the nearest lakhs, millions or crores. A balance sheet presented in actual rupees is not compliant.

Schedule III Division I — Statement of Profit and Loss

These are the statements that go into the annual filing of a company with the Registrar, and the same figures are tagged for XBRL filing with the ROC where that applies. Line III is the one caption the 2021 amendment rewrote: it used to read Total Revenue and now reads Total Income. A statement still headed "Total Revenue" is running a pre-2021 template.

One further insertion is easy to miss. Where a company is a section 8 company, the notes to revenue from operations must separately disclose grants or donations received alongside sale of products, sale of services and other operating revenues.

Ageing schedules introduced by the 2021 amendment

Four ageing tables were inserted into Schedule III, and they do not share a bucket structure. Getting the buckets wrong is the single most common formatting error we see in first-year-of-compliance sets.

Trade payables ageing schedule

Ageing runs from the due date of payment. Where no due date is specified, it runs from the date of the transaction. Unbilled dues are disclosed separately.

Trade receivables ageing schedule

Different buckets — this one starts at less than six months — and four rows built on "considered good" and "considered doubtful". Where an entity has long-term trade receivables sitting under other non-current assets, the same table is required for those separately.

Capital work-in-progress and intangible assets under development

Both need an ageing table with the rows Projects in progress and Projects temporarily suspended, across four buckets from "less than 1 year" to "more than 3 years". The total must tally with the balance sheet amount.

Both also need a second, separate completion schedule for any project whose completion is overdue, or which has exceeded its cost compared with its original plan. That table lists each project against the period in which it is now expected to be completed. It has no total column. This is the disclosure most often omitted entirely — a CWIP ageing table on its own is not the full requirement.

The eleven ratios and the 25% rule

Clause Y(xii) requires eleven named ratios. Schedule III prescribes no formulae — it requires the company to explain what it has included in the numerator and denominator. The numerators and denominators below follow Annexure B of ICAI's Guidance Note on Division I, which is the usual reference point.

Additional Regulatory Information — clause Y

Clause Y of the general instructions for preparation of the balance sheet carries fourteen items. Several of them overlap with what a statutory auditor has to report on separately under CARO, so the two are best worked through together. Most sets discharge them with standard nil statements, which is legitimate — but only when the statement is actually true. A nil statement that has not been verified is a false disclosure, not a formality.

Promoter shareholding

A separate table was inserted under share capital: promoter name, number of shares held at the end of the year, percentage of total shares, and percentage change during the year — computed against the number at the beginning of the year, or against the date of issue where the shares were issued during the year for the first time. Details are given separately for each class of shares, a total row is required, and the whole table is repeated for the comparative period.

ICAI format for non-corporate entities

Applies to partnership firms, proprietorships, AOPs and BOIs, HUFs, trusts, societies, statutory corporations and any other body carrying on business or professional activity that is neither a company nor an LLP. Where a statute or regulator prescribes its own format — Maharashtra Public Trust Rules, government autonomous bodies, and areas where ICAI has issued specific guidance such as educational institutions and NPOs — that format prevails.

The structure mirrors Schedule III closely, with three deliberate departures: the heading, the capital block, and where partner amounts sit.

The heading is OWNERS’ FUNDS AND LIABILITIES, not "Equity and Liabilities" — the Guidance Note explains that some items of owners' funds do not strictly meet the definition of equity. The current asset caption is Cash and bank balances, where Division I says "Cash and cash equivalents". The balance in the statement of profit and loss is captioned Undistributed Surplus.

Where partners’ amounts go — the three rules

The consequence is that the statement carries two pre-tax profit measures: profit before partners' remuneration and tax, then profit before tax. That is not an accident of drafting — the first is the natural tie-in for a section 40(b) computation under the Income-tax Act, and the format is built to support it.

The capital account note

For each owner or partner, by name, the note must disclose separately: opening balance, capital introduced or contributed during the year, remuneration for the year, interest for the year, withdrawals during the year, share of profit or loss for the year expressed both as a percentage and as an amount, and closing balance. Where the firm maintains fixed capital, a second note in the same format covers the current accounts.

ICAI format for LLPs

An LLP is scoped out of the non-corporate Guidance Note and has its own. The balance sheet is headed PARTNERS’ FUNDS AND LIABILITIES, and the capital block reads:

• (1) Partners’ Fund
  • (a) Partners’ Capital Account — (i) Partners’ Contribution (ii) Partners’ Current Account
  • (b) Reserves and surplus

Everything below that follows the non-corporate structure. The remuneration, interest-on-contribution and drawings rules are identical to the ones set out above. The capital account note carries one extra column that the non-corporate note does not: agreed contribution, as set out in the LLP Agreement.

Does the LLP need an audit?

Rule 24 of the LLP Rules 2009 requires every LLP's accounts to be audited, subject to an exemption. Read with the way Form 8 is validated in practice, the working rule is:

Form 8 is one half of the annual filing of an LLP, alongside Form 11. It must be digitally signed by a minimum of two designated partners, and separately certified by a chartered accountant, cost accountant or company secretary in whole-time practice. The due date is the end of six months from the close of the financial year.

A note on the drafting: the proviso to Rule 24(8) is worded with "or" in a way that, read literally, would exempt a high-turnover LLP with small contribution. MCA's own instruction kit for Form 8 states the converse — certification by the auditor is required where turnover exceeds ₹40 lakh or contribution exceeds ₹25 lakh. Universal professional practice, and the position taken here, follows Form 8.

MSME or Large — the classification that replaced Level I–IV

For accounting periods commencing on or after 1 April 2024, ICAI's four-level classification for non-company entities no longer exists. There are two categories.

Whether an audit is required at all is a separate question from the format — our note on audit applicability and the filing process covers the thresholds across entity types. An entity that avails any exemption must say so in a note: that it is an MSME and that it has complied with the Accounting Standards insofar as they apply to an MSME. An entity that becomes an MSME is not eligible for the exemptions until it has remained one for two consecutive years. Qualification is tested as at the end of the relevant accounting period.

The practical effect for most firms and LLPs is that a cash flow statement is not mandatory — AS 3 does not apply to an MSME — though entities are encouraged to prepare one. The builder decides this automatically from the classification and lets you override it.

Ten errors we keep finding in signed sets

These are the checks the builder runs automatically. They are listed here because they are worth knowing whether or not you use the tool — every one of them has appeared in a set that had already been signed.

How to use the builder

1. Set up the entity. Choose the entity type and the tool selects the framework. It will tell you, live, whether the entity is an MSME or a Large entity against the ICAI thresholds, whether the Guidance Note is mandatory for your year, and — for an LLP — whether a statutory audit is required under Rule 24(8).
2. Bring in the trial balance. Paste it, or drop an Excel, CSV or Tally XML export. Previous-year columns are picked up if present. Group rows are detected and excluded so totals are not double counted.
3. Review the groupings. Every ledger is mapped to a Schedule III or Guidance Note head with a confidence score. Correct anything the tool got wrong — corrections are remembered, so the next client file maps itself.
4. Fill the schedules. Inventory, the fixed asset reconciliation, ageing tables, MSMED disclosures, promoter shareholding, clause Y, ratios, contingent liabilities and related parties. The accounting policies note is generated from the entity settings and is fully editable.
5. Read the checks, then export. Balance sheet, statement of profit and loss, cash flow statement and auto-numbered notes, out to Excel, Word or PDF.

Frequently asked questions