Standard chart of accounts Luxembourg: PCN structure
The PCN has seven classes, not eight. The regulation allows day-to-day bookkeeping outside the standard format: the constraint applies at filing, which catches out groups running an in-house chart.
How is the standard chart of accounts structured?
Accounts under the Luxembourg standard chart of accounts fall into seven classes. Five cover the balance sheet, numbered 1 to 5, and two cover the profit and loss account, numbered 6 and 7.
The applicable framework is the grand-ducal regulation of 12 September 2019, published in Mémorial A631, which sets the content of the standard chart referred to in article 12 of the Commercial Code and repeals the regulation of 10 June 2009. It applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2020.
| Class | Scope |
|---|---|
| 1 | Capital, provisions, financial debt due after more than one year |
| 2 | Formation expenses and fixed assets |
| 3 | Inventories and work in progress |
| 4 | Third-party accounts, receivables and payables |
| 5 | Financial accounts |
| 6 | Charges |
| 7 | Income |
Which companies fall within the PCN?
The regulation covers companies required to file the standard account balances with the trade and companies register, under article 75 of the amended law of 19 December 2002.
This includes sole traders, commercial companies with legal personality, EEIGs and EIGs, Luxembourg branches of foreign entities, and financial participation companies.
Exemptions exist, mainly for sole traders and for SNC and SCS partnerships whose turnover excluding VAT does not exceed EUR 100,000, subject to conditions on the status of the partners. Companies reporting under IFRS follow a separate regime. Verify your position before concluding that an exemption applies.
Must day-to-day bookkeeping follow the standard format?
No, and this is the least well explained feature of the regime. The regulation expressly allows companies not to keep their day-to-day accounts in line with the standard chart. The constraint applies to the output, through a mapping table.
The regime therefore opens two routes. Bookkeeping directly in the standard format, where filing becomes an export with no reprocessing, the sensible route for a purely Luxembourg operation. Or bookkeeping on an in-house chart with a mapping table, the route imposed on subsidiaries of international groups.
The second option is not inherently more expensive. It becomes so when the mapping table is neither documented, nor versioned, nor tested. A mapping held in one person's memory is an operational risk, not a method.
Which mapping errors cost the most?
The same errors come back, year after year. Third-party accounts not split between maturities above and below one year, which distort the filed balance sheet. Shareholder current accounts misclassified by nature and maturity. Deferred charges treated as formation expenses, the classic confusion between classes 2 and 6. No mapping for accounts opened during the year, the chart evolving while the mapping table stays frozen. And the transposition of a foreign chart without arbitration: the French general chart does not map across by a simple shift in numbering.
None of these errors is caught by the software. They surface at filing, that is at the worst point in the calendar.
How do the PCN, eCDF filing and FAIA connect?
All three rest on the same account structure, which is rarely explained together. The PCN sets numbering and classification. eCDF filing collects account balances under that numbering. FAIA reproduces ledger accounts with their standard mapping in the event of an AED audit.
A defective mapping therefore does not produce an isolated incident. It surfaces first at the annual accounts filing, then at tax audit, with different counterparties and shorter response times.
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