Accounting informatization work specification (Policy forwarding)

Accounting information work standards

Chapter 1   General rules

Article 1 In order to standardize accounting work in the digital economy environment, promote the healthy development of accounting informatization, improve the quality of accounting information, and give full play to the role of accounting data, this standard is formulated in accordance with laws, administrative regulations, and rules such as the Accounting Law of the People's Republic of China.

Article 2 State organs, social organizations, companies, enterprises, public institutions, and other organizations (hereinafter referred to as "units") shall be subject to this standard when carrying out accounting informationization work.

Article 3 The accounting informatization referred to in these regulations refers to the process in which units use modern information technology and digital infrastructure to carry out accounting, as well as to organically integrate accounting with other business management activities using modern information technology and digital infrastructure. The accounting software referred to in this specification refers to the application software or its functional modules specifically used by units for accounting and financial management. Accounting software has the following basic functions:

（1） Directly collect data for accounting and financial management;

（2） Generate accounting vouchers, books, reports and other accounting materials;

（3） Store, convert, output, analyze, and utilize accounting data.

The accounting software services referred to in this specification refer to the services provided by accounting software service providers, including general accounting software development, personalized requirement development, software system deployment and maintenance, cloud service function subscription, user training, and related data analysis.

The accounting information system referred to in this specification refers to accounting software and its software and hardware operating environment.

The electronic accounting vouchers referred to in this standard refer to various types of accounting vouchers generated, transmitted, and stored in electronic form, including electronic original vouchers and electronic accounting vouchers. Electronic original vouchers can be generated internally by the organization or received externally.

Article 4 The Ministry of Finance is in charge of the national accounting informationization work, and its main responsibilities include:

（1） Formulating policies, systems, and plans for the development of accounting informatization;

（2） Drafting and formulating accounting informationization standards;

（3） Standardize the basic functions and related services of accounting software;

（4） Guide and supervise units to carry out accounting informatization work, and provide accounting software and related services to accounting software service providers.

Article 5 The financial departments of the people's governments at or above the county level are responsible for managing the accounting informationization work within their respective administrative regions, guiding and supervising the implementation of accounting informationization work by units within their respective administrative regions.

The financial departments of the people's governments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government are responsible for guiding and supervising accounting software service providers to provide accounting software and related services within their administrative regions.

Article 6 Units shall attach great importance to accounting informatization work, strengthen organizational leadership and talent cultivation, establish and improve systems, perfect management mechanisms, ensure capital investment, and actively promote the application of accounting informatization in their own units.

The person in charge of the unit is the first person responsible for the accounting informationization work of the unit. Units shall designate specialized agencies or positions to be responsible for accounting informationization work, and carry out work in accordance with the requirements of this standard.

Units that have not established accounting institutions and positions may adopt entrusted accounting agencies or other methods prescribed by the Ministry of Finance to organize accounting work and promote the application of accounting informatization.

Article 7 Units equipped with accounting software and accounting software service providers providing accounting software and related services shall comply with the national unified accounting software function and service standards.

Chapter 2   Construction of Accounting Informatization

Article 8 Units shall carry out accounting informationization construction according to their development goals and actual needs for informationization system construction, following the principles of overall planning, safety compliance, cost-effectiveness, etc., and promoting it according to local conditions.

Article 9 Units shall strengthen the top-level design and overall planning of accounting informationization construction, clarify construction goals and resource investment, unify the construction of management mechanisms and standard systems, reasonably build system frameworks and content modules, scientifically formulate implementation steps and paths, and ensure the organic integration and interconnection of internal and external systems.

Article 10 Units shall gradually promote the realization of financial management informatization and decision support informatization from the business field level on the basis of promoting the realization of accounting informatization, and promote the digitization and intelligence of accounting work from the technical application level.

Article 11 Units shall strengthen the construction of accounting informationization systems, clarify the management requirements and accountability mechanisms for various fields and links of accounting informationization construction and application.

Article 12 Units shall pay attention to the matching of accounting information systems with their operating environment, promote the optimization and innovation of management models, organizational structures, and business processes through accounting informatization, and establish a sound accounting informatization work system that meets the requirements of digital economy development.

Article 13 Units shall strengthen the construction of accounting standardization on the basis of following the unified accounting system of the state, and formulate a series of business standards such as unified accounting subject system, accounting process, financial master data, and accounting statements based on the actual business scenarios and management needs of the unit. They shall also establish and improve internal technical standards and data standard system, eliminate data silos, and promote data utilization.

Encourage industry regulatory authorities, large enterprises, and corporate groups to carry out unified accounting standardization construction for their affiliated units.

Article 14 Units shall construct and equip accounting information systems based on management requirements, technical strength, and business needs, taking into account system functionality, security, reliability, openness, scalability, and other requirements, and reasonably selecting methods such as purchase, customized development, combination of purchase and customized development, and rental.

Customized development includes independent development by the unit, commissioned development by external units, and joint development with external units.

Article 15 Units equipped with accounting information systems by entrusting external units to develop, purchase, or rent shall stipulate in relevant contracts the rights and responsibilities of service content, service quality, service timeliness, data security, and other related matters.

Article 16 The design of business processes and the formulation of business rules for accounting information systems shall be scientific and reasonable. Encourage the visualization of business process and rule configuration operations.

The accounting information system should establish necessary review and approval procedures such as handling, auditing, and approval. The business processes automatically executed by the system should be searchable, verifiable, and traceable.

Article 17 For accounting vouchers that are automatically generated by accounting information systems and have clear audit rules, the audit rules can be embedded in the accounting information system and automatically audited by the system. Accounting vouchers that have not been automatically audited should be manually audited before further processing.

The rules for automatic system review should be searchable, verifiable, and traceable, and their establishment and changes should follow the approval procedures, be strictly managed, and kept on file for future reference.

Article 18 Units shall comply with the requirements of the internal control standard system, use technical means to strengthen the control of the entire process of planning, design, development, operation, and maintenance of accounting information systems, and embed control processes and rules into the accounting information system to achieve automatic prevention, monitoring, and early warning of violations of control requirements.

Article 19 Units that construct business systems related to accounting information systems shall arrange for specialized institutions or positions responsible for accounting informationization work to participate, fully consider the needs of accounting information systems, and strengthen internal system collaboration.

Units should promote the integration of accounting information systems and business information systems, directly drive accounting processing through business processing, improve the consistency between business data and accounting data, and achieve internal data resource sharing and analysis utilization within the unit.

Article 20 Units shall, based on their actual situation, carry out the interconnection between their own accounting information systems and the information systems of external units such as finance, taxation, banking, suppliers, and customers, in order to achieve centralized and automatic processing of external transaction information.

If the unit providing products or services meets the conditions, it shall deliver electronic vouchers that comply with the accounting data standards for electronic vouchers to the unit receiving the products or services.

The accounting information systems used by budget units such as state organs and public institutions shall be connected to the integrated system of financial budget management in accordance with the relevant interface standards of the integrated system of financial budget management.

Encourage units to use modern information technology to regularly verify transactions and improve the authenticity and completeness of external transactions and accounting information.

Article 21 Encourage units to actively explore the application of modern information technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, mobile Internet, cloud computing, Internet of Things, blockchain, etc. in the accounting field, so as to improve the level of accounting informatization.

Article 22 Units that meet the conditions shall use information technology to promote the intensification, automation, and intelligence of accounting work, and build and optimize work models such as financial shared services, integrated budget management, and cloud services.

Chapter 3   accounting data processing and application

Article 23 Units shall follow the national unified accounting data standards, ensure the quality and availability of accounting data in various links such as input, processing, and output of accounting information systems, and consolidate the foundation of accounting data processing and application.

Article 24 Units shall establish secure and convenient channels for obtaining electronic original vouchers. Encourage units to achieve automatic collection and reception of accounting data such as electronic original vouchers through data exchange, data integration, and other methods.

Article 25 Units handling and applying electronic accounting vouchers shall ensure the security and reliability of all aspects such as receiving, generating, transmitting, and storing electronic accounting vouchers.

Units should verify the received electronic original vouchers and other accounting data by improving the functions of accounting information systems, establishing comparison mechanisms, etc., to ensure that their sources are legal and authentic, any tampering with electronic original vouchers can be detected, and necessary procedures should be set up to prevent duplicate entries.

Article 26 The accounting information system of a unit shall be able to accurately, completely, and effectively read or parse electronic original vouchers and their metadata, conduct accounting in accordance with the provisions of the national unified accounting system, and generate accounting vouchers, accounting books, financial accounting reports, and other accounting materials.

The unit accounting information system should be adapted to the electronic voucher accounting data standards, have the ability to process electronic accounting vouchers that meet the standards, and generate structured data files of accounting information that meet the standards.

For units whose financial accounting reports are required to be audited by certified public accountants according to regulations, it is encouraged to adapt their accounting information systems to the standards of certified public accountant audit data.

Article 27 If a unit uses paper printed copies of electronic accounting vouchers as the basis for reimbursement, accounting, and filing, it must also save the original electronic accounting voucher file printed on the paper copy and establish a retrieval relationship between the paper accounting voucher and its corresponding electronic file.

Article 28 If a unit uses electronic image files of paper accounting vouchers as the basis for reimbursement, accounting, and archiving, it must also keep the paper accounting vouchers and establish a retrieval relationship between the electronic image files and their corresponding paper accounting vouchers.

Article 29 Units that meet the conditions shall promote paperless and automated processing of electronic accounting vouchers throughout the entire process, including receiving, generating, transmitting, storing, and archiving.

Article 30 Units may entrust one or more accounting data processing stages to third-party platforms that meet the requirements for intensive and batch processing, while ensuring clear rights and responsibilities and information security, in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Encourage third-party platforms to explore one-stop and aggregated service models.

Article 31 Units shall establish and improve management systems for the formation, collection, organization, archiving, storage, statistics, utilization, identification, and disposal of electronic accounting data in accordance with relevant national regulations on electronic accounting archives management. Reliable security protection technologies and measures shall be adopted to ensure the authenticity, integrity, availability, and security of electronic accounting archives during transmission and storage, and to strengthen the archiving and management of electronic accounting data.

Structured data files of accounting information that comply with electronic voucher accounting data standards should be archived synchronously with electronic accounting vouchers.

Article 32 Electronic accounting vouchers, electronic accounting books, electronic financial accounting reports, and other electronic accounting materials with reliable sources, standardized procedures, and compliant elements have the same legal effect as paper accounting materials and may be received, processed, generated, and archived only in electronic form. Electronic accounting records that meet the relevant national requirements for electronic accounting record management have the same legal effect as paper accounting records. Unless otherwise provided by laws and administrative regulations, electronic accounting records may no longer be stored in paper form.

Article 33 Units shall fully utilize modern information technology to promote the integration of business and finance, expand accounting functions, enhance the ability of accounting data support units to improve performance management, risk management, and sustainable development, and assist units in high-quality development.

Units should strengthen the aggregation, integration, and sharing of accounting data with other financial supervision data, and promote the informatization of financial supervision.

Article 34 Encourage units to use various information technologies to carry out accounting data governance, explore the formation of scalable, aggregatable, and comparable accounting data elements, enrich data application scenarios, and create service value.

Encourage units to prioritize safety and compliance, promote the circulation and use of accounting data elements, leverage the supporting role of accounting data elements in resource allocation, and fully realize the value of accounting data elements.

Article 35 Units shall provide electronic financial accounting reports and other electronic accounting information to users of accounting data in accordance with legal and regulatory requirements.

Enterprises implementing the general classification standards of enterprise accounting standards shall submit financial accounting reports in XBRL to regulatory departments such as the finance department in accordance with relevant requirements.

Article 36 When units accept external supervision and inspection agencies to query and access accounting information in accordance with laws and regulations, they may only provide electronic accounting information that meets the requirements of relevant national regulations on electronic accounting file management in electronic form.

Chapter 4   accounting information security

       Article 37 The accounting informatization work of units shall coordinate security and development, follow the relevant provisions of the "People's Republic of China Network Security Law", "People's Republic of China Data Security Law", "People's Republic of China Law on Guarding State Secrets" and other laws and regulations, and effectively prevent, control and resolve the risks that may arise from accounting informatization.

Article 38 Units shall strengthen the prevention of accounting data security risks, adopt effective measures such as data encryption transmission technology, ensure the security and compliance of accounting data processing and application, and avoid the risks of leakage, tampering, and damage of accounting data in the generation, transmission, processing, storage, and other links.

Units should backup electronic accounting data, specify the backup method, frequency, storage medium, retention period, etc., to ensure the security, integrity, and usability of accounting data.

Encourage units to establish an accounting data security classification and grading management system in accordance with internal data management requirements, and strengthen the protection of important and core data.

Article 39 Units shall strengthen the prevention of security risks in accounting information systems and take effective measures to ensure the continuous, stable, and secure operation of accounting information systems.

Article 40 Units shall fully implement security protection management and technical requirements in accordance with the national network security level protection system, strengthen the prevention of accounting information network security risks, take effective measures to safeguard accounting information network security, and prevent risks such as viruses, Trojans, malicious software, hacker attacks, or illegal access.

Article 41 Units carrying out accounting informationization activities involving state secrets shall comply with the relevant provisions of laws and regulations such as the Law of the People's Republic of China on Guarding State Secrets.

Units shall not store, process, or transmit electronic accounting data involving state secrets or other restrictive provisions of laws and regulations in non confidential information systems and equipment.

Article 42 The deployment of data servers for unit accounting information systems shall comply with relevant national regulations. If there are units setting up branches overseas and their data servers are deployed overseas, electronic accounting data backups should be kept within the country, and the backup frequency should not be less than once a month. The electronic accounting data backed up domestically should be able to independently meet the needs of accounting work and financial supervision of the unit when the overseas server cannot work normally.

Units should strengthen cross-border accounting information security management to prevent domestic and foreign institutions and individuals from obtaining and transmitting accounting data through illegal, irregular, and improper means.

If the electronic accounting records of a unit need to be carried, shipped or transmitted overseas, they shall be handled in accordance with relevant national regulations.

Article 43 Units carrying out accounting informationization work involving the processing of personal information of natural persons shall comply with relevant provisions of laws and regulations such as the Personal Information Protection Law of the People's Republic of China.

Article 44 Units carrying out accounting informationization work involving various activities of artificial intelligence and generative artificial intelligence services shall comply with relevant laws and regulations, respect social morality and ethical ethics.

Chapter 5   supervision of accounting informatization

Article 45 The financial departments of local people's governments at or above the county level shall supervise whether the accounting informationization work carried out by units complies with the requirements of this standard, accounting software functions, and service standards through on-site inspections, third-party evaluations, and other methods. For units that do not meet the requirements, the financial departments of local people's governments at or above the county level shall order them to make corrections within a specified period of time. If the deadline is not changed, the financial departments of the people's governments at or above the county level shall impose penalties in accordance with the law and report the relevant situation to the relevant departments at the same level.

Article 46 The Ministry of Finance shall conduct inspections on the compliance of accounting software and related services provided by accounting software service providers with accounting software functions and service standards through methods such as organizing peer review, third-party certification, and soliciting opinions from user units. If the financial departments of the people's governments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government discover that accounting software and related services do not comply with the functional and service standards of accounting software, they shall report the relevant situation to the Ministry of Finance. Any unit or individual who discovers that accounting software and related services do not meet the functional and service requirements of accounting software may report to the finance department of the local province (autonomous region, municipality directly under the Central Government). The finance department of the relevant province, autonomous region, municipality directly under the Central Government shall conduct an investigation based on the report and handle it in accordance with the provisions of the second paragraph of this article.

Article 47 If an accounting software service provider provides accounting software and related services that do not meet the requirements of accounting software functionality and service standards, the Ministry of Finance may interview the main person in charge of the service provider and order them to make corrections within a specified period of time. Those who fail to make corrections within the deadline shall be punished by the Ministry of Finance in accordance with the law, and the relevant situation shall be reported to the relevant departments.

Article 48 If the financial department and its staff violate the provisions of this regulation, as well as other illegal and irregular behaviors such as abuse of power, dereliction of duty, and favoritism, they shall be held accountable in accordance with the law and regulations.

Chapter 6   Supplementary Provisions

Article 49 The financial departments of the people's governments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the Central Government may formulate specific implementation measures within their respective administrative regions in accordance with these regulations.

Article 50 This standard shall come into effect on January 1, 2025. The "Norms for Computerized Accounting Work" (CaiKuai Zi [1996] No. 17) and the "Norms for Enterprise Accounting Informatization Work" (CaiKuai [2013] No. 20) are simultaneously abolished