Many sole traders — OSVČ in Czech — look at their records once a year, in March, when the tax return deadline is close. What follows is the familiar scramble: hunting for receipts, reading a year of bank statements and trying to recall what that July payment was for. A simple monthly routine removes all of it. Here is how to close a month in about 15 minutes with Taxorio.
Why a monthly close is worth it
- No year-end scramble — everything is ready in December, so the return takes an hour rather than a week.
- A live view of your finances — you know what you earn, what you spend and whether the business is actually profitable.
- Problems surface early — an unpaid invoice, a missing document or an unexpected cost shows up now, not six months later.
- Better advance payments — if you pay income tax or insurance advances, a regular view tells you whether they are still in the right range.
- Calm during an inspection — if a tax inspection arrives, the documents are sorted and complete.
The 15-minute checklist
Run this in the first few days of the new month, say between the 1st and the 5th. Five steps.
Step 1: Check the invoices you issued (3 minutes)
Open Taxorio and go through last month's issued invoices. Three things matter:
- Is everything invoiced? — go through the jobs and services you delivered last month and make sure each one has an invoice. Nothing should be missing.
- Update payment status — check the bank account and mark the paid invoices as paid. Taxorio flags overdue invoices on its own.
- Chase what is unpaid — if an invoice is past its due date, contact the client. The sooner the better; past 30 days, consider a formal reminder.
Taxorio shows the status of every invoice in one list, and the financial dashboard totals what is still outstanding, so you can see at a glance how much your clients owe you.
Step 2: Capture and file expenses (5 minutes)
This is normally the slowest part, and the one where scanning helps most:
- Collect the month's receipts and documents — paper receipts, invoices from your inbox, e-shop confirmations.
- Scan them into Taxorio — photograph a receipt with your phone and the AI reads the amount, the date and the supplier, and proposes a category.
- Check the categorisation — Taxorio offers a full set of expense categories grouped by area: IT and technology, operations, travel and vehicles, professional services, sales and marketing, materials and tools, training, non-deductible items and other. Confirm what the AI proposed, or change it.
- Add what is only on the bank statement — recurring payments such as internet, phone or software subscriptions that never produce a paper receipt. Enter them by hand or scan the electronic invoice.
Tip: do not save the scanning for the end of the month. Photograph each receipt as you get it, and the monthly close becomes a review rather than a data-entry session.
Step 3: Read the dashboard (3 minutes)
The financial dashboard gives you the state of the business at a glance. Go through four numbers:
- Income for the month — does it match what you expected? If it is well above or below normal, find out why.
- Expenses for the month — look for anything unexpected, and for a regular cost that is missing, which usually means you forgot to record it.
- The ratio between the two — watch the trend. If expenses are closing in on income, it is time to look for savings or to raise your prices.
- Unpaid invoices — the total and how old they are. A growing total is a warning sign.
These are numbers you would otherwise have to assemble from several places. Three minutes with them can surface a problem that would otherwise wait until the end of the year.
Step 4: VAT — for registered payers only (3 minutes)
If you are registered for VAT (DPH), the monthly check matters more:
- Check the VAT records — Taxorio shows output VAT from your invoices and input VAT from the expenses and invoices you received. Confirm the figures look right.
- Check the rates — make sure each invoice carries the rate that belongs to it (21%, 12% or 0%).
- Prepare the control statement data — every document above 10 000 Kč has to be recorded with the customer's or supplier's DIČ, the Czech tax identification number.
- Compare against the return — when the VAT return is due, generate the DPHDP3 XML export from Taxorio and check the figures before you upload it.
If you are not registered, skip this step but keep an eye on your turnover. Once you approach 2 000 000 Kč in a calendar year you will have to register; the turnover tracker shows where you stand.
Step 5: Archive and close (1 minute)
- File the paper — keep the scanned originals in a folder labelled with the month and year. Scanning does not remove the reason to keep them.
- Back up anything you keep locally — Taxorio runs in the cloud and is backed up, but your own side records are your responsibility.
- Note the oddities — a large purchase, an unusual payment, a cost you are not sure about. At the end of the year you will be glad of the context.
A longer checklist, if you want one
- Compare your insurance advances — once a quarter, check that your social and health insurance advances still match what you actually earn. If you are earning considerably more than last year, raising them voluntarily avoids a large balance later.
- Update the client list — add new clients and refresh contact details. Taxorio pulls the register data from ARES, so the IČO (the eight-digit business identification number) is usually enough.
- Check your contracts — if a framework agreement is running out, renew or renegotiate it now.
- Plan the bigger purchases — a new laptop or a software renewal next month is easier to absorb when you have planned around the cash flow.
A year with the routine, and a year without
Without regular records
- January and February: the deadline approaches and so does the pressure.
- Collecting documents: two days going through drawers, mailboxes and bank statements.
- Missing documents: three receipts cannot be found and two have faded past reading.
- Uncertainty: "was that 5 200 Kč a working lunch or a personal purchase?"
- Preparing the return: one to two days of work, or an accountant's fee.
- Stress and errors: a real risk of leaving income or expenses out.
With a monthly routine
- Every month: 15 minutes of checking, which is three hours across the year.
- End of the year: the data is complete and already checked.
- Preparing the return: generate the DPFDP7 XML export and review it.
- No surprises: you know roughly what you owe well before you owe it.
- An inspection: everything is documented.
When to do it
Pick a fixed point and keep it. Variants that work:
- The first working day of the month — first thing, while last month is still fresh.
- The last working day of the month — close the month as your final task.
- A fixed date, such as the 5th — put it in the calendar as a repeating event.
The day itself matters far less than the regularity. Once you skip a month it is harder to come back, so treat it as a habit and start with the next one.
What Taxorio does for the routine
- AI scanning of documents — photograph the receipt and the amount, date and a proposed category come back filled in.
- Automatic invoice numbering — no watching the number sequence by hand.
- QR payment codes on invoices — the client scans the code in their banking app instead of retyping the account number and variable symbol.
- The financial dashboard — income, expenses, VAT and unpaid invoices in one view.
- Expense categories — costs sorted into groups you can carry into the tax return.
- XML exports — DPHKH1, DPHDP3 and DPFDP7 generated from your own records, on the PRO plan.
- A client list backed by ARES — enter the IČO and the register details are filled in.
The free plan covers a limited number of invoices, expenses and scans per month and does not include the XML exports; the PRO plan lifts the invoice and expense limits and costs 69 Kč per month.
Start with the month that just ended: go through its invoices and expenses in Taxorio, then put the next close in your calendar.
Taxorio scope: Taxorio provides invoicing and income/expense records for Czech sole traders. It is not full accounting or personalised tax advice. For an unsupported or unusual case, verify the treatment with a Czech accountant or tax adviser before filing.