Early this November 2014, the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission released a notice informing the public of that no annual audited financial statements shall be accepted for filing unless accompanied by a required cover sheet.  Following are the contents of the notice:

Please be informed that starting Fiscal Year 2014, no annual Audited Financial Statements (AFS) shall be accepted for filling unless accompanies by the required Cover Sheet for AFS. Those who are dealing with financial statements are advised to visit the site here and read about the cyber security threats associated with them.

The required Cover Sheet may be secured from the Electronic Records and Management Division of the Information and Communications Technology Department (ERMD-ICTD) or the Public Assistance Center (PAC) at the SEC, Ground Floor, SEC Bldg. EDSA-Greenhills, Mandaluyong City or may be downloaded at www.sec.gov.ph.

For your guidance.

Included in the notice was a scanned copy of the new Cover Sheet template.

If you are looking for a template for the cover sheet, we have uploaded this Cover Sheet for Financial Statements Template available for you to download. This template is in a Microsoft Word format and is easy to edit.  Unfortunately, we don’t have an Excel format of the template.

Please see available downloads below:

• Cover Sheet for Financial Statements Template
• SEC Notice for New Cover Sheet

Pointers in accomplishing the cover sheet

Information required in the cover sheet are actually straight forward, but it has to be accurate and data should be consistent with your SEC registration. Just some pointers in accomplishing the new cover sheet:

• SEC Registration No. – This can be found in the Certificate of Incorporation
• Company Name – This can be found in the Certificate of Incorporation or Articles of Incorporation
• Principal Office – This can be found in the Articles of Incorporation
• Form Type – is usually AAFS for “Annual Audited Financial Statements”. If the financial statements to be filed is a consolidated one, indicated AACFS for “Audited Annual Consolidated Financial Statements”
• Telephone No. & Mobile No. – Should be working and should be consistent with other documents submitted to the commission
• No. of Stockholders – should be consistent with your stock and transfer books (and with the GIS that you will file)
• Annual Meeting – should be consistent with your by-laws. It does not necessarily match you actual date of meeting (since AFS filing is sooner than the actual meeting)
• Contact person is preferably a top official of the company responsible in financial reporting.

All Boxes must be properly and completely filled-up. Failure to do so shall cause the delay in updating the corporation’s records with the Commission and/or non-receipt of Notice of Deficiencies. Further, non-receipt of Notice of Deficiencies shall not excuse the corporation from liability for its deficiencies.