Bookkeeping for a Swedish service company means turning each invoice into balanced entries on the BAS chart of accounts, usually in the accountant's own system. The invoicing side and the books meet in a file, and when that file arrives broken, somebody retypes figures that were already right.
The posts below cover that handover. One explains why VAT has to be split per rate, so that sales at 25, 12 and 6 per cent post to their own accounts and can be checked against their VAT. Another goes through the nine BAS accounts a customer invoice touches, including 1513 for the ROT and RUT share claimed from Skatteverket. The third covers the SIE4 file itself: why it is written in CP437 rather than UTF-8, and why one unbalanced voucher makes the whole file fail.
Closepact's invoicing module is not bookkeeping: it keeps no general ledger and files no VAT return. It exports SIE4 type 4I against BAS and writes no file unless every voucher balances to zero in öre. The file has not yet been imported into a live Fortnox, and we do not claim that it has. The guide to bookkeeping and SIE has the details.
- Invoicing
VAT per line: why a blended rate cannot be declared
A Swedish invoice owes a figure at each rate it charged, not an average across the document. Here is the arithmetic, with a three-rate invoice worked through to the öre.
Sep 8, 2026 · 9 min
- Bookkeeping
The SIE4 file your accountant opens, and the two ways it usually arrives broken
SIE4 is CP437, not UTF-8, and one voucher that does not balance makes an accounting package refuse the whole file. Two vouchers worked out in full, including a ROT invoice.
Jun 11, 2026 · 10 min
- Bookkeeping
A BAS chart of accounts for a service company, and the nine accounts invoicing touches
Nine accounts carry every customer invoice a Swedish service company sends. Here is what each one is for, the ratio check the pairing makes possible, and why ROT gets its own receivable.
May 28, 2026 · 9 min