The Private Limited Company's Full Annual Compliance Calendar: Every Filing, Month by Month

A private limited company's year looks quiet from outside. Inside, it runs on about a dozen dated obligations, and most of them do not sit where founders expect. Two of the biggest filings are not tied to a calendar date at all — they count forward from your annual general meeting. One famous September deadline no longer exists. This page puts the whole year in order, month by month, for a company whose financial year ends on 31 March, which is most companies in India. Pin it up. Work from it.

Three anchors hold the calendar together. The board must meet at least four times a year, with no more than 120 days between two meetings, under Section 173. The annual general meeting must be held within six months of the year-end under Section 96 — by 30 September for a March year-end, and within nine months for a company's very first AGM. And the statutory audit sits underneath everything: no AOC-4, no AGM adoption, nothing moves until the auditor signs.

April: the year opens, and two returns fall due

30 April — MSME-1 for October to March. If your company owed money to a micro or small enterprise supplier and any part of it stayed unpaid beyond 45 days, the half-yearly return in MSME Form I is due by 30 April for the October–March half. No such dues, no filing. But check the ledger before you assume; this is the return directors forget precisely because it depends on payables, not on the calendar alone.

April is also when the first board meeting of the year usually lands — the meeting that notes last year's closing, plans the audit and keeps the 120-day gap rule comfortable rather than tight.

May and June: the deposits return, and the KYC that changed

30 June — DPT-3. Every company (other than a government company) files this return of deposits and of borrowings that are not treated as deposits, showing the position as on 31 March. Director loans, shareholder loans, inter-corporate deposits — the return captures them whether or not your company has anything the layman would call a deposit. If the company has taken loans that appear in the balance sheet, assume DPT-3 applies until someone has checked properly.

DIR-3 KYC — read this carefully, because the old rule is dead. For years, every director filed DIR-3 KYC by 30 September, every year. That annual deadline no longer exists. The Companies (Appointment and Qualification of Directors) Amendment Rules, 2025, notified as G.S.R. 943(E) and in force from 31 March 2026, replaced it with a filing once every three financial years in DIR-3 KYC Web, due on or before 30 June of the filing year. Directors who were compliant through FY 2025-26 next file by 30 June 2028. There is no routine KYC filing in 2026 or 2027. Two duties survive the change: if a director's mobile number, email or residential address changes, the update must be filed within 30 days of the change; and a DIN deactivated for a missed KYC still costs ₹5,000 to reactivate. Delete the September reminder. Put one in June 2028 instead.

June also carries the first advance tax instalment for companies, on the 15th — a tax-track date, not an MCA one, but it shares the diary.

July to September: audit, board approval, AGM

This is the heavy quarter. The statutory audit is completed, the board approves the financial statements and the board's report at a board meeting, and the AGM is held by 30 September. Everything in the next quarter counts from the AGM date, so the day you actually hold it — not the last permitted day — is the date your filings will be measured from. Hold it on 12 September and your clocks start on 12 September.

September carries the second advance tax instalment on the 15th. Keep it in the same diary as the AGM papers; in my experience the two get planned in the same sitting anyway.

October: the filing month

For a company that held its AGM on 30 September, October carries three dates in quick succession:

• 15 October — ADT-1, within 15 days of the AGM, but only in a year when an auditor is appointed or reappointed at that meeting. An auditor appointed for a five-year term does not generate an ADT-1 every year. First appointments and reappointments do.
• 30 October — AOC-4, the financial statements, within 30 days of the AGM under Section 137.
• 31 October — MSME-1 again, this time for the April–September half, on the same 45-day dues condition as April.

The company's income-tax return also falls due on 31 October where the accounts are audited. Different department, same month, same tired finance team. Plan October as one block of work, not three surprises. Our note on what the MCA fee relief did and did not cover this season — the filings left out of the extension, including MSME-1 and ADT-1 — is worth reading before you assume any October date moved.

November: the annual return

29 November — MGT-7 or MGT-7A, the annual return, within 60 days of the AGM under Section 92(4). The worked date assumes a 30 September AGM; count 60 days from your own AGM date. MGT-7A is the shorter form for One Person Companies and small companies; a private limited company that is not a small company files MGT-7. The annual return is a snapshot of shareholding, directors and indebtedness as on the AGM date — which is why share transfers done in a hurry in October cause such grief in November. Record transfers when they happen.

December to March: the quiet months that are not empty

December carries the third advance tax instalment on the 15th. The last advance tax instalment falls on 15 March. In between, the work is housekeeping with legal consequences: board meetings to keep the four-a-year count and the 120-day gap intact, statutory registers kept current, minutes written and signed while memories are fresh. Think of the register and minute book as the company's memory. In a due diligence three years later, nobody will ask how good your intentions were; they will open the minute book, and the minute book will answer.

March closes the financial year on the 31st — the date on which the DPT-3 position, the MSME dues position and next year's audit will all be measured.

The filings with no month of their own

BEN-2 is the main one. Where a significant beneficial owner — an individual holding, directly or together with others, at least 10% of the shares, voting rights or dividend rights, or exercising significant influence or control — declares the interest to the company in Form BEN-1, the company files BEN-2 with the Registrar within 30 days of receiving it, under Section 90. A fresh declaration follows a change in the ownership position, and a fresh BEN-2 follows the declaration. It is a 30-day clock that starts on an event, not a date circled in January. Our BEN-2 filing guide works through who counts as a significant beneficial owner.

The same event-based logic covers a change of directors or their particulars (DIR-12, 30 days), a special resolution (MGT-14, 30 days) and, for a young company, the one-time INC-20A declaration of commencement of business within 180 days of incorporation. None of these appears on an annual calendar, and all of them carry their own late fees. The calendar keeps you safe on the recurring dates; a simple rule — tell your company secretary about any change within a week of making it — keeps you safe on the rest.

For FY 2025-26 only: the fee-relief window, and what it does not do

For the FY 2025-26 annual filings, the MCA's General Circular No. 05/2026 dated 24 October 2026 opened a fee-relief window: the AOC-4 family of forms may be filed without additional fees up to 31 December 2026, and MGT-7 and MGT-7A up to 31 January 2027. Read the limits before you relax. The normal filing fee is still payable. The circular does not extend the time for holding the AGM, and it does not touch ADT-1, MSME-1 or DPT-3. A filing made after the window closes attracts additional fees counted from the original due date, not from the window's end — the relief forgives delay inside the window, it does not restart the clock. The statutory dates in the calendar above remain the dates to plan by; the window is a safety net, not a schedule. Our post on the AOC-4 and MGT-7 fee-relief circular sets out the circular form by form.

Outside such relief, delay on AOC-4 and MGT-7 costs an additional fee of ₹100 per day per form, with no ceiling. Sixty careless days on both forms is ₹12,000 — real money for a small company, spent on nothing.

If you would rather hand the whole calendar — audit coordination, board and AGM paperwork, and every ROC form above — to a team that works from these dates daily, that is exactly what our annual filing of company service runs, month by month, so no date depends on somebody's memory.