Accounting vouchers written in foreign languages, when used to record accounting books and prepare financial statements in Vietnam, must be translated with the main contents specified in Clause 1, Article 16 of the Law on Accounting and Financing into Vietnamese. The accounting units must take responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the translated accounting vouchers.

Ms. Tran Thi Kieu Ly, Showa Motorbike Vietnam Co., Ltd. has referred to Article 8 of Decree 41/2018 / ND-CP, which contains the content, the enterprise will be administratively sanctioned in the school. "Do not translate accounting vouchers from languages ​​into Vietnamese". However, Ms. Ly is not sure what kind of documents will be considered as accounting vouchers that need translation?

Specifically, for the case of payment with a foreign partner at Mrs. Ly's company as follows:

- Payment of bills (debit note) on purchases from foreign suppliers.

- Payment of travel expenses such as: Travel / food expenses abroad,

In the above two cases, the Company pays based on invoice / debit note / or tickets of the host country and payment request form (with the recipient's content, amount) signed and approved by the board of directors.

Through the Enterprise Receiving and Answering System, Ms. Ly would like to ask, if the payment of Showa Vietnam Motorbike - Auto Parts Co., Ltd. was considered a violation of Article 8 of Decree 41 / 2018 / ND-CP? In order not to violate any violation, can the company automatically translate and manually translate the translated contents in the debit note / invoice / ticket?

Regarding this issue. The Ministry of Finance responds as follows

: Pursuant to the provisions of Clause 3, Article 3 of the Law on Accounting:

“3. Accounting records are documents and storage devices that contain economic/financial transactions that occur and have been completed as the basis for making accounting books”.

Pursuant to the provisions of Clause 1, Article 16 of the Law on Accounting:

“1. An accounting record must have:

a) Name and number of the accounting record;

b) Date of the accounting record;

c) Name, address of the entity that makes the accounting record;

d) Name, address of the entity that receives the accounting record;

dd) Contents of the economic/financial transaction that occurs;

e) Quantity, unit price, amount of the economic/financial transaction in number; total amount of accounting records serving collection or payment of money in both number and words;

g) Signatures, full names of the persons who make, approve the accounting record, and relevant persons”

Clause 1, Article 20 of the Accounting Law stipulates: “1. Invoices are accounting records made by goods sellers and service providers to record information about the goods sale or service provision as prescribed by law“.

Translation of accounting vouchers

Clause 5, Article 5 of Decree No. 174/2016 / ND-CP dated December 30, 2016 detailing a number of articles of the Accounting Law:

“5. Primary contents of accounting records in foreign languages used for recording accounting books and preparing financial statements in Vietnam must be translated into Vietnamese language in accordance with Clause 1 Article 16 of the Law on Accounting. The accounting unit is responsible for the accuracy of such Vietnamese translations. The Vietnamese translations of accounting records must be attached to the original versions.

Vietnamese translations of documents in foreign languages attached to accounting records such as contracts, project dossiers, statements, etc. are not mandatory unless required by a competent authority.