Autherise takes over the mechanical half of indirect tax — reading your invoices and customs entries, building the return, watching every filing deadline. To do that accurately from day one, we need your registrations, your people, and enough history to reconcile against.
Most of this is a one-off. Work through it in the order below; nothing here should take more than an afternoon to assemble.
5
setup steps in the app
5
certificates we must hold
24–48h
to account approval
12 mo
of history we ask for
The sequence
How onboarding runs
Steps 1–5 are the guided setup inside Autherise. Steps 6–8 are the data work we do together once your workspace is approved.
Kickoff call — 30 minutes
We map your entities, the jurisdictions you file in, roughly how many documents a month you handle, and who owns the return. Nothing to prepare.
Business information
You create the workspace and enter your legal identity — section A below.
Jurisdictions & documents
For each country you file in: registration numbers, industry, addresses, and the certificates that prove them — sections B and C.
Team setup
Invite your colleagues and assign roles — section D.
Review & approval
You submit; we check the registrations against the certificates and approve. Expect a decision within 24–48 business hours. We come back to you directly if anything does not reconcile.
Historical load
We import your transaction history and contacts, and set your opening VAT position — section E. This is the step that decides whether your first return foots.
Document backfill
You send a representative batch of invoices, credit notes and customs entries; we run them through extraction and show you the output line by line — section F.
Parallel run, then live
We build one return alongside your existing process and reconcile the two, line by line. Once they agree, you file from Autherise.
Section A
Company & legal identity
Entered once, at the top of setup. Use the name exactly as it appears on your registration certificate — a mismatch here is the most common reason an application comes back to us.
Registered legal name
Must match your business registration certificate character for character. Appears on every return and export.
Trading name
If you trade under a different name. Used on invoices and in the app header.
Business type
Limited company, partnership, sole trader or LLP.
Registered address
Street, city, state or province, postal code, country. Recorded per jurisdiction, so give us each one if you are registered in more than one place.
Primary contact
Email and phone for the person who owns the tax relationship, plus your website if you have one.
Company logo
Branded onto your invoices, VAT return exports and client-facing PDFs. Square, transparent background works best.
PNG or JPG · max 2 MB
Section B
Tax registrations — one set per jurisdiction
Repeat this block for every country you file in, and tell us which one is your default. Autherise supports multi-jurisdiction filing, and your registration details drive both the rate applied and the deadlines we watch.
Jurisdictions you file in
And which is your default — new transactions land there unless told otherwise.
Tax Identification Number (TIN)
Your core tax number in that jurisdiction.
Business Licence Number (BLN)
Where the jurisdiction issues one. Drives business licence filing reminders.
VAT registration number (VAT-TIN)
Printed on your returns and matched against the VAT numbers on supplier invoices.
Registration date
The date you were registered for VAT in that jurisdiction. Bounds the earliest period we can file.
Expiry dates
For the business licence, tax ID and VAT-TIN. We alert you before each one lapses, so an expired licence never quietly blocks a filing.
Industry or sector
Set per jurisdiction, because it determines your default VAT rate. Tell us if you operate across more than one sector — tourism and retail, say — and we will configure the rates separately.
Filing frequency and period end
Monthly or quarterly, and the first period you want Autherise to produce.
Accounting basis
Accrual or cash. Cash-basis returns recognise VAT on payment, which changes what lands in each period.
VAT group structure
Only if you file as a group: the member entities, which one is the representative, and whether you want intercompany supplies eliminated from the group return.
Filing as a group? Send us the full member list up front rather than adding entities later. Group returns net the members together, and adding an entity mid-cycle means restating periods already filed.
Section C
Certificates to upload
Uploaded directly in the app during step 3, one per jurisdiction. We check each one against the numbers you entered in section B before approving the account.
Accepted: PDF, JPG, PNG, DOC, DOCX · up to 10 MB per file
Business registration certificate
The official incorporation or registration document from the registry.
Tax registration certificate
Evidencing the TIN in B-02.
VAT registration certificate
Evidencing the VAT-TIN in B-04. Also the source we use to confirm your effective registration date.
Bank statements — last 3 months
Used for verification and, where you file on a cash basis, to reconcile payment dates.
Director identification
Passport or driver’s licence for each director on the registration.
Memorandum & articles of association
Helps us confirm group structure and signing authority.
Professional indemnity insurance
If you are a regulated firm filing on behalf of clients.
Section D
People & access
Send us full name, work email and role for everyone who needs access. Invitations go out by email; each person sets their own password. You can add and remove people yourself at any time.
Admin
Full access to every feature and to organisation settings, including billing and team management.
Finance Lead
Manages financial data, reports and VAT returns. The role that approves and submits a return.
Accountant
Views and manages transactions and financial reports. Day-to-day processing.
Viewer
Read-only access to data and reports. Useful for auditors and external advisers.
User list with roles
Name, work email, role. At least one Admin.
Who approves and submits the return
Named individually. Nothing is filed without their sign-off, and the approval is recorded in the audit trail.
Invoice approvers
If you plan to raise invoices from Autherise, tell us who reviews them and in what order.
Email domain for auto-join
So colleagues on your domain can be recognised rather than invited one at a time.
Section E
Opening position & history
This is the section that decides whether your first Autherise return agrees with your last manual one. It is worth getting exactly right, and we will help you assemble it on the call.
Your last filed VAT return
A copy of the filed form and the period it covers. We reconcile our first output against it line by line.
VAT credit carried forward
Any credit balance brought forward from the prior period. If this is missed, every subsequent return is out by that amount — it does not self-correct.
Transaction history — 12 months
Straight export from your accounting system. Dates, counterparty, description, net, VAT, gross, and whichever tax code you use.
CSV or XLSX
A sample file and column notes
Send one small extract first with a note on what each column means. We build a reusable mapping template from it, so every later import is one click.
Open invoices, with amounts already paid
Include partial payments. Without them, settled invoices import looking unpaid and your receivables report will be wrong on day one.
CSV or XLSX
Customer & supplier list, with TINs
Names, tax numbers and addresses. TINs are what let us match extracted documents to the right counterparty and identify intercompany trade automatically.
CSV or XLSX
Chart of accounts & expense categories
With your current mapping to VAT treatment. We mirror it so your reports stay comparable to what your team already reads.
Special VAT treatments you rely on
Exempt supplies, zero-rating, reduced rates, import waivers, partial exemption methods, any ruling or concession you hold. Send the correspondence if you have it.
Section F
Documents for us to process
Autherise reads your source documents and turns them into posted transactions, so what you send here becomes your return. Start with one representative month covering every document type you handle — that is enough for us to tune extraction before the full backfill.
Sales invoices
Output VAT. Native PDFs read most accurately; scans are fine and go through OCR.
Purchase & supplier invoices
Input VAT. Include the ones where VAT is stated as a separate line and the ones where it is not — we handle both differently.
Credit and debit notes
Send them with the invoices they reverse, or at least the referenced invoice numbers. Issued and received notes route to different lines of the return.
Customs declarations and entries
If you import. The full entry, including any second or continuation pages, so the declared value and duty are complete.
Broker, freight & clearing invoices
Send them alongside the declaration they relate to. Brokerage fees and the import VAT on the entry are two separate claims, and pairing them up front stops them being double-counted.
Any waivers or exemptions granted
Where VAT was waived on an import, we need to know — so we never claim back tax you did not actually pay.
How to send them. Drag files or whole folders into the app, or forward them to the private Autherise inbox we issue you — a real email address you can set as a rule in your mail client, so supplier invoices arrive on their own. One document per file is ideal; multi-document PDFs and ZIPs work too.
Section G
Connections & extras
None of this blocks go-live. It is what makes Autherise stop being a thing you upload to and start being a thing that keeps itself current.
Accounting system
Name and version, plus read access or a scheduled export. Removes the manual CSV step entirely.
Mail forwarding rule
Point your accounts-payable mailbox at your Autherise inbox and supplier invoices process themselves on arrival.
Existing document archive
A shared drive or folder tree we can seed your Vault from, so historical documents are searchable next to new ones.
Export branding
Logo, brand colours and any footer text you need on outgoing documents and return exports.
Filing deadlines you already track
Business licence renewals, annual returns, anything else with a date. We will watch them alongside the VAT deadlines.
Delivery
How to send it to us
Preferred
Upload inside Autherise
Once your workspace exists, everything in sections A–D goes in through guided setup and everything in F goes to the Vault. Files land against the right entity and jurisdiction automatically, and stay encrypted at rest.
Bulk data
Send section E to your onboarding lead
Spreadsheets and prior returns are easier to review together before import. Send the sample file first — we would rather fix a mapping on 20 rows than on 20,000.
Anything else
Questions on any line item in this document, or if something here does not map cleanly onto how your business actually works. That is worth a conversation, not a guess.
The six things that hold up a go-live
- Legal name doesn’t match the certificate. Even a missing “Ltd” sends the application back.
- No VAT credit brought forward. Every return after it is wrong by that amount, permanently.
- Invoice history without amounts paid. Settled invoices import as unpaid.
- Supplier list without TINs. Documents cannot be matched to counterparties, and intercompany trade goes undetected.
- Nobody named as the approver. Returns are built but cannot be submitted.
- Certificates expiring inside 30 days. Renew first, then upload — we will only have to ask again.
Before you begin
Quick checklist
Download the PDF and work down the list. Everything marked required above must be in place before your first return.
Questions on any line item? sdavis@autherise.com