Year-end fiscal checklist for Tunisian small businesses

Closing the fiscal year for a Tunisian PME means reconciling several parallel obligations—not just printing a trial balance. You need sales invoices cleared through TTN El Fatoora, TEJ lines for professional fees paid to third parties, VAT periods that match bank and ledger, a defensible inventory count, and an export package your expert-comptable can sign off without rebuilding your books from PDFs. This checklist is the sequence DarDev finance teams and Hesabi customers use before year-end; it is operational guidance, not legal advice.

Confirm thresholds and filing channels with your expert-comptable before you lock December—the goal is fewer January surprises and a handoff your accountant can trust.

The five workstreams to close before 31 December

1. TTN El Fatoora — every issued invoice cleared, archived, and matched to revenue
2. TEJ — withholding on professional fees complete for the year with payment proof
3. VAT — declarations reconciled to ledger; credit and debit balances documented
4. Inventory — physical count, valuation method applied, variances explained
5. Accountant handoff — structured exports, not email attachments scattered across inboxes

TTN El Fatoora reconciliation

Start from TTN, not from your spreadsheet. Pull the list of invoices submitted and cleared for October through December (and any stragglers from earlier months still open). Each cleared document should map to a ledger entry: customer, amount, tax breakdown, clearance reference, and issue date. Gaps usually mean a draft invoice never submitted, a rejection you missed, or a credit note issued outside the platform.

If you are new to clearance workflows, read our TTN El Fatoora guide for Tunisian SMEs first—it covers enrollment, digital certificates, and rejection handling. Certificate expiry during holiday shutdown is a common year-end blocker; renew before mid-December when support queues lengthen.

• Match TTN clearance IDs to accounting entries—no orphan revenue lines
• Resolve rejected or pending invoices before inventory and VAT finalization
• Archive PDF/XML pairs per invoice for audit, not only portal screenshots
• Document any manual corrections with who approved them and when

TEJ withholding review

TEJ is separate from TTN: it reports professional remuneration paid to third parties and tax withheld at source. Year-end is when PMEs discover twelve months of consultant payments never entered into TEJ cycles because finance treated them as "small one-offs." Reconstructing beneficiary identifiers from bank RIB labels in January is expensive.

Export all vendor payments subject to withholding for the full year and cross-check against bank outflows. See our TEJ reporting guide for who must file and how rhythm differs from TTN clearance.

VAT reconciliation

Walk each VAT period in the fiscal year: output VAT on cleared sales, input VAT on eligible purchases, and payments or credits posted to DGI. The ledger total for VAT accounts should match declared amounts period by period, not only in aggregate. Investigate differences before closing—carry-forward credits and unsettled debits affect next year's cash planning.

Inventory and cost of goods

Retail and wholesale PMEs should schedule a physical count before the last shipping day—or document cut-off rules for goods in transit. Compare count to system on-hand and explain material variances in writing.

Apply your valuation method consistently and document variances above your materiality threshold. Service-only companies may skip stock counts but should close work-in-progress if those balances are material.

Accountant handoff package

Your expert-comptable should receive one structured package, not a thread of forwarded emails. Minimum contents: trial balance, general ledger export, TTN clearance summary, TEJ payment register, VAT declaration copies with payment receipts, bank reconciliations for every account, fixed-asset additions and disposals, payroll summaries if applicable, and inventory count worksheets with sign-off.

1. Agree export format in November

   Ask which columns and file types your firm needs. Ten minutes of alignment beats reformatting in the first week of January.

2. Run a pre-close review meeting

   Walk through exceptions: uncleared TTN docs, unmatched bank lines, open TEJ gaps, inventory variances.

3. Deliver and obtain acknowledgment

   Send the package through a tracked channel; confirm receipt before statutory deadlines.

Common year-end mistakes

• Closing revenue before all TTN clearances for December sales are confirmed
• Assuming TEJ can wait until annual bilan preparation
• Sending accountants PDFs without structured exports they can import
• Skipping inventory because "the system should be right"
• Letting one person hold all fiscal knowledge without documented backup

How Hesabi supports year-end closing

Hesabi on hesabi.tn is built for Tunisian SME finance: TTN-oriented invoicing, payment-side data for TEJ alignment, VAT-aware ledgers, and exports expert-comptables can reuse across clients. If you are still evaluating tools, our guide on choosing invoicing software for a Tunisian PME lists questions to ask before you migrate mid-year.