Translation of Company Financial Statements, Turnover and Audit Reports

This page is for companies: finance directors, accountants, lawyers, startup founders and consulting firms preparing a client's financial package for a foreign recipient. Here we explain what we translate, how we handle large volumes and how we protect information that is not yet public.

For general information on financial translation, including documents for private individuals, see the page financial translation. Other areas of corporate cooperation - for companies.

When a company needs financial translation

• Investment and due diligence - the investor and its advisers read the financial statements, the audit report, the tax returns and the key contracts in their own language;
• A foreign parent company - the subsidiary's financial statements for consolidation and for the group auditor;
• International financing - a loan from a foreign bank or an international financial institution, a grant, leasing;
• Tenders - proof of financial standing in an international tender;
• A startup funding round - the financial model, budget, management report and proof of turnover for a foreign fund;
• A branch or company abroad - financial statements and a registry extract for a foreign registrar or bank;
• Disputes and arbitration - financial evidence for a court or an arbitral tribunal.

What we translate

• statement of financial position (balance sheet);
• statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive income;
• statement of cash flows;
• statement of changes in equity;
• notes to the financial statements;
• independent auditor's report and management report;
• account turnover statements and bank certificates;
• profit tax and VAT returns, certificates of no tax arrears;
• budgets, financial models, investment memoranda, the financial part of a business plan;
• the financial terms of loan, investment and shareholder agreements.

Depending on their category, Georgian companies submit their financial statements to the Service for Accounting, Reporting and Auditing Supervision (SARAS), and they are published on reportal.ge. Many of them are prepared under IFRS or IFRS for SMEs. That is why in the English translation we use the official IFRS titles: Statement of Financial Position, Statement of Profit or Loss and Other Comprehensive Income, Statement of Cash Flows, Statement of Changes in Equity - and not loose variants that raise extra questions for a foreign auditor.

The audit report: where one word changes the opinion

The audit report is the most sensitive page in a financial package. The reader looks first for the auditor's opinion, and its type has to be rendered exactly:

• Unmodified opinion - the financial statements present the position fairly in all material respects;
• Qualified opinion - the financial statements are fair, except for a specific matter;
• Adverse opinion - the financial statements do not present the position fairly;
• Disclaimer of opinion - the auditor was unable to obtain sufficient evidence.

Mixing up these terms gives the recipient a completely different picture of the company. We also keep the structure of the report unchanged: basis for opinion, material uncertainty related to going concern, emphasis of matter, key audit matters, responsibilities of management and of the auditor, the audit firm's details and the signing auditor.

Figures, tables and Excel

In financial translation the figures matter more than the text. This is how we work on a large package:

• The format is preserved - an Excel file comes back as Excel, with its formulas and sheets; Word and PDF statements keep the same layout, columns and pages;
• One term, one meaning - before work starts we build a glossary of terms based on your chart of accounts, and use it in every document, including the financial statements of the following years;
• Reconciliation - we check that the amounts in the notes match the primary statements, and that the totals match the totals in the original;
• Number formatting - thousands and decimal separators, negative amounts in brackets and units (GEL thousand, GEL million) follow the conventions of the receiving country;
• A second check - a second specialist checks the translation against the original, with a separate pass on the figures.

Errors we find when reviewing financial translations

We are often asked to review financial statements translated by another translator or a machine translation tool before they go to an investor or an auditor. The most common errors are:

• "Revenue" and "profit" are mixed up - revenue, income and profit are different line items, and confusing them makes the profit and loss statement meaningless;
• One line item under different names - "trade receivables" in the balance sheet, "accounts receivable" in the notes and a third variant in the audit report. The reader assumes these are three different items;
• Units are lost - "in GEL thousand" in the heading was not translated, and the table shows a company a thousand times smaller;
• Negative amounts - a loss shown in brackets turned into a positive number in the translation;
• The comparative period - the prior-year column was translated with the current-year heading;
• Legal forms - LLC, JSC and individual entrepreneur are rendered inconsistently in the translation, and the related-party note becomes unclear.

After such a review we return the corrected file with a list of changes, so that your finance team can see exactly what was changed and why.

Confidentiality and NDA

Annual financial statements before publication, investment memoranda, due diligence materials and turnover statements are trade secrets. That is why:

• we sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before we receive the files - on your company's template or ours;
• only the translators and editors working on your project have access to the documents;
• we receive files through the channel your company uses, including a data room;
• we do not upload the text to public online translators;
• working files are kept for one month at most, for corrections, and then deleted. On request we delete them sooner.

Our rules in detail: confidentiality.

Certification and apostille

For an investor or a parent company, a translation with the bureau's seal and the translator's signature is enough. A foreign registrar, court or bank often requires notarization: the notary confirms that the translator's signature is genuine. If the document is going to a country that is party to the Hague Convention and the recipient asks for an apostille, the apostille on the notarial document is placed by the Public Service Development Agency. More details: notarization and apostille.

Timing and large volumes

A single set of financial statements, an audit report or a tax return is ready the same or next day. For a multi-volume package, such as due diligence materials, we plan the work in stages around your deadline: you receive the first part the same or next day, and the rest in the agreed order, so your team can start reviewing without waiting.

For regular cooperation, for example quarterly financial statements, the glossary and format are set up once, and each subsequent set of statements is translated with the same terms.

How we start working together

Frequently asked questions

Related pages