How to Find PAN Number of a Person or Firm or Company

Most often, we as Accountants have to get the works done even though we have short of information. 

One of such situations is: We don't have a Permanent Account Number (PAN) but we have to manage the things  like

• We don't have PAN of a Person or a Partnership Firm or a Company who is a TDS deductee but we have to file a Quarterly e-TDS Return;
• We have file a IT Return of our Company where we don't have PAN of a person who gave Unsecured Loan which covered under Section 269SS/ 269T; 
• Knowing PAN of Auditor/ Audit Firm for RoC or IT Forms
• Filing PAN of a Partner or Director of Key Management Personnel or Major Shareholder in IT Return Form, etc

The following are some of techniques that we use in our day-to-day practice for finding the PAN of an Individual, a Partnership Firm, a Company, a trust or a Government Organization:

1. Through Know your TAN (Not Know your PAN)

I as a Chartered Accountant always feel quite easy to know PAN of a person through Know your TAN by providing Category, State and Name. We don't need to give full name. It's biggest advantage here. 

Here, the tricky is choosing Category. Most of the cases, we can guess the category correctly but sometimes, we have to play around by changing the categories.

There are cases, especially in case of Govt Organization, we may not find PAN in TAN Database or the PAN what we are looking for does not have TAN at all. In such cases, we have to go to the following alternatives.

2. Know your PAN

Following link Know your PAN and submitting the form after filling DoB and Surname

If you don't know Date of Incorporation of a Company, you may follow link Company Master Details of MCA21 Site and the result will be as follows:

Finding PAN of a Company is quite simple. Getting Date of Incorporation from Master Data of MCA21 Site and submitting Know your PAN of IT Site.

However, you may find sometime name of the company in MCA21 is different from name of the Assessee in IT database.  In such situations, we need to play around a little bit.

For example, PRIVATE LIMITED in MCA21 but PVT LTD in IT Database, There is space between two words in company name as per MCA21 but there is no space as per IT Database, etc. 

3. Through Service Tax Invoice:

It's quite simple one.

If we go through the provisions of the Service Tax, every service provider who issues Tax Invoice has to give his Service Tax Registration Number on the Invoice mandatorily; and 

The service tax registration number is a 15 digit number which comprises as follows:

1st 10 digits: PAN No. of the Assessee

11th & 12th digits: Service Tax Code (it's either ST or SD)

13th, 14th & 15th digits: Serial Number for the ST Registration allotted for a PAN Card

4. Through RoC Forms:

As a Chartered Accountant, I always find new way for a problem. This is the most interesting and challenging option of finding PAN Number.

We must admit the fact that most of the businessmen are Directors of one or more companies and has the DIN. Now-a-days, it's very easy to know the DIN of a director. You can find DIN in RoC Forms and Income Tax Forms also.

To know DIN of a person, follow View Signatory Details of MCA21 site.

Here is the tricky now. We can get PAN number of a director from many RoC Forms but I go now with downloading Form No. INC-1 and fill some of the basic fields of the form, fill the DIN in Point No. 8 (Particulars of Proposed Directors) and click Pre-fill. That's it, we get the PAN Number corresponding to the DIN from the MCA21 Database as shown in the screen shot below.

As an Accountant, the above are some of the techniques that I use in our day-to-day practice for finding the PAN. If you know any new technique or do you have any query on finding PAN, please provide as a comment below for the benefit our Accountants Community.

Top Accounting Ratios that Every Accountant Should Know

The accounting ratios or financial ratios can be used to evaluate the financial condition of a company. 

The accounting ratios may be used by the Bankers, by the current and potential shareholders (Owners) and also by Creditors of the Company. 

Therefore, it's very much essential for the Accountants to know about the accounting ratios and the interested parties of the Ratios. The following is the list of important list of Accounting Ratios that Every Accountant should know:

To Test	Name of Ratio	Formula	Parties Interested	Industry Norm
Liquidity and Solvency	i) Current Ratio	Current Assets Current Liabilities	Short-term creditors, investors, money lenders & like parties	2:1
	ii)  Liquid/Quick/ Acid Test Ratio	Current assets - Stock - Prepaid ExpensesCurrent Liabilities - Bank Overdraft - Prereceived Income	-do-	1:1
	iii)  Absolute Liquid Ratio	(Cash + Marketable securities) Quick Liabilities	-do-	1:1
	iv)  Proprietary Ratio	Proprietor’s Fund Total Assets  [Proprietor’s funds = Equity Capital + Preference Capital + Reserves and Surplus + Accumulated funds - Debit balances of P & L A/c and Miscellaneous Expenses]	-do-	60% to 75%
Capitalisation	i)  Debt Equity Ratio	Debt Equity  [Debt = Long/Short-term loans, debentures, bills, etc, Equity = Proprietor’s funds]	-do-	2:1
	ii)  Capital Gearing Ratio	Fixed cost funds Funds not carrying fixed cost  [Fixed cost funds = Preference share capital, Debentures, Loans from  banks, financial institutions, other unsecured loans]. [Funds not carrying fixed cost = Equity share capital + undistributed profit - P & L A/c (Dr. Bal.) - Misc. expenses].	-do-	2:1
Profitability and management efficiency	i)  Gross Profit Ratio	Gross Profit x 100 Net sales	Shareholders, Long-term Creditors, Government	20% to 30%
	ii) Net Profit Ratio	Net Profit x 100 Net sales [Net profit may be either Operating Net profit, Profit before tax or Profit after tax].	-do-	5% to 10%
	iii)  Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)	Net profit x 100 Capital employed  [Capital employed = Fixed Assets + Current Assets - Current Liabilities].	-do-	-
	iv)  Return on Proprietors fund	Profit after tax Proprietor’s funds	-do-	-
	v)  Return on Capital	Profit after tax less pref. Dividend  x 100 Equity Share Capital	-do-	-
	vi)  Earnings per share [EPS]	Profit after tax less pref. Dividend Total  No. of Equity Shares	-do-	-
	vii)  Dividend per share [DPS]	Total Dividend paid to ordinary shareholders Number of ordinary shares	Shareholders, Investors	-
Management efficiency	i)  Stock Turnover	Cost of goods sold Average Stock	Management	5 to 6 times
	ii)  Debtors Turnover Ratio	Debtors + Bills receivable  x 365 Net Credit sales	Management	45 to 60 days
	iii)  Debtor’s Turnover Rate	Credit sales Avg. Debtors + Bills receivable	Management	60 to 90 days
	iv)  Creditor’s Turnover Ratio	Creditors + Bills payable x 365 Credit purchases	-do-	-
	v)  Creditor’s Turnover Rate	Credit purchases Average Creditors	-	-
	vi)  Operating Ratio	Operating Costs x 100 Net sales  [Operating Cost = Cost of goods sold + Operating expenses (viz. Administrative, selling & finance expenses)]	-	-
Number of times preference dividends covered by net profit	Preference shareholders’ coverage ratio	Net profit (after Interest & Tax but before equity dividend) Preference Dividend	Preference shareholders	-
Number of times equity dividends covered by net profit	Equity shareholder’s coverage ratio	Net profit (after interest, tax & Pref. Dividend) Equity Dividend	Equity shareholders	-
Number of times fixed interest covered by net profit	Interest coverage  ratio	Net profit (before Interest & Tax) (PBIT) Fixed interests & charges	Debenture holders, Loan creditors	-
Relationship between net profit and total fixed charges	Total coverage ratio	Net profit (before Interest & Tax) (PBIT) Total fixed charges	Shareholders, investors, creditors, lenders	-
The idle capacity in the Organisation	Fixed expenses to total cost ratio	Fixed expenses Total cost	Management shareholders	-
Material consumption to sales	Material consumption to sales ratio	Material consumption Sales	Management	-
Wages to sales	Wages to sales ratio	Wages Sales	Management	-
The future market price of a share	Price earning ratio	Market price of a share (MPS) Earnings per share (EPS)

An Excel Tip That Will Save You From Hours of Headache - Copying Visible Cells Only

This is the most useful Excel trip I learned recently and it saved me many headaches while working. I am also very surprised at how few people know about this feature.

So often during our work, we filter our excel sheets to show only certain data we care about at the time. Often, I wanted to copy this data to another excel sheet. So I would select all the data I could see and hit copy. I would paste the item in the other sheet only to have Excel copy over the data that I thought I had filtered out in addition to the data I wanted. Ugh!

In order to fix this problem, complete the following steps when copying over filtered data.

1.  Select the data you want to copy.
2. Hit F5 or On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find & Select, and then click Go To.
3. Click the “Special” button in the lower left hand corner.
4. Click on the “Visible Cells Only” Circle box.
5. Hit OK.
6. Press Ctrl “C” or Edit Copy
7. Paste data into the appropriate sheet.

Only the visible data should have been copied over.

We can describe the feature with the following simple example.

In the example, Row 2 is hidden (as shown in Image 1)

                                    Image 1

When you copy and paste this range, the result will be shown as Image 2

                                    Image 2


To copy visible cells only, execute the following easy steps.

1. Select the range A1:A4.

2. On the Home tab, click Find & Select, Go To Special...

 

                             Image 3

3. Click Visible cells only and click OK.

 

                       Image 4

 

 Excel selects the visible cells.

4. Press Ctrl + C to copy the range.

5. Select cell A6 and press Ctrl + V to paste the range.

Result:

                                        Image 5

 By default, Excel copies both visible and hidden cells. However, it is possible to copy visible cells only as shown in the above Example.

Like it or not, most of your time as an accountant is spent in Excel. As such, it is best to learn as many excel tricks as you can in order to make your life easier.  Hopefully, you can implement the tip “Copying Visible Cells Only”  in your work going forward. If you have some of your own favourite Excel tips, I invite you to leave a comment below for others to reference.