Blog
Practitioner notes from the Tallinn office - Estonian accounting, MiCA / CASP readiness, EMI safeguarding, and cross-border Baltic tax. Written by the accountants doing the work.
Startup Accounting After the Seed Round: What Changes and How to Be Series A Ready
The day a seed round lands, a startup's accounting stops being a private matter. Convertibles and SAFEs turn into shares and share premium on the cap table, investors start expecting a monthly report on burn and runway, an ESOP appears with its own tax logic, and somewhere on the growth curve Estonian audit thresholds start to apply. This post walks through what actually changes in the books when outside money arrives, what a credible monthly investor pack contains, how Estonian option tax works at a high level, and why clean, data-room-ready bookkeeping is the cheapest due-diligence insurance a founder can buy before Series A.
Read moreGame Studio Accounting in Estonia: From the 70/30 Split to Investor-Ready Books
A game studio's books are shaped by decisions most other startups never face: is Steam revenue booked gross or net of the 30% platform cut, when is a consumable in-app purchase actually earned, and what happens to a publisher advance that has not yet recouped? For an Estonian OÜ studio, these choices decide reported revenue, gross margin, and how the company looks to a gaming VC at seed and beyond. This post covers platform-store revenue, in-app purchase and virtual-currency recognition, capitalising development costs, VAT on digital game sales, royalty and advance accounting, and the reporting package funded gametech studios should produce.
Read moreAgritech Accounting in Estonia: What Foodtech Startups Need From Their Books
Agritech and foodtech run on rhythms software never sees: harvest seasons that compress a year's revenue into a quarter, sensor hardware sold alongside subscriptions, CAP-linked grants routed through PRIA, and product lines that can sit on different VAT treatments. The books have to absorb all of it and still produce the burn-rate and runway numbers a seed+ investor expects every month. Estonia's 0% tax on retained profit and its e-Residency infrastructure make it a strong base for the sector – if the accounting is set up for the field, not just the cloud. Here is what that setup looks like.
Read moreAI Startup Accounting in Estonia: What to Do With the GPU Bill
An AI startup's largest expense line after payroll is usually compute, and how that compute is classified decides what the company's gross margin looks like to investors. Inference that serves paying customers is cost of revenue; training runs and experiments are R&D. Get the split wrong and the margin story in the pitch deck collapses in diligence. This post walks through AI startup accounting on an Estonian OÜ: GPU cost classification, capitalising versus expensing model development, why Estonia's 0% tax on retained profit suits compute-hungry companies, grant and Horizon Europe accounting, usage-based revenue recognition, and the investor reporting a seed+ AI company should produce.
Read moreCleantech Accounting in Estonia: What Climatetech Startups Need From Their Books
Climatetech is the most capital-intensive corner of the startup world: pilot plants, sensor fleets, and electrolysers do not fit the software playbook of near-zero marginal cost. The accounting has to carry that weight – depreciation schedules that investors can defend, grant accounting across Horizon Europe and EAS instruments, early decisions on how carbon-credit revenue is recognised, and ESG data that seed+ funds now request alongside the financials. Estonia's 0% tax on retained profit makes it an unusually good home for this reinvestment-heavy model. Here is how cleantech accounting in an Estonian OÜ actually works.
Read moreProptech Accounting in Estonia: Marketplace Money, Property VAT and the Metrics VCs Actually Read
Proptech sits on a fault line: the software side of the business is standard-rated digital services, while the property side it touches is one of the most exemption-heavy areas of VAT law. Add marketplace flows where tenant or buyer money passes through your accounts, and the bookkeeping questions get real fast. This guide walks through what we set up for seed and VC-funded proptech clients on an Estonian OÜ: marketplace vs SaaS revenue recognition, the VAT map, client-money segregation, asset-heavy vs asset-light structures, and reporting GMV versus net revenue the way investors expect.
Read moreDefense Tech Accounting in Estonia: What Military-Tech Startups Need From Their Books
Estonia has quietly become one of Europe's densest defence-tech ecosystems: two NATO DIANA test centres, a national defence-industry push, and a wave of dual-use startups raising from specialised defence VCs. The accounting that supports this is not standard SaaS bookkeeping. Export-control licences must reconcile with invoices, government contracts pay on milestones that stretch across financial years, grants carry audit trails, and investors expect data-room-ready numbers under strict confidentiality. This post walks through what defense tech accounting in Estonia actually involves.
Read moreMedtech Accounting in Estonia: How Healthtech Startups Keep Books Through Years of R&D Before the First Euro of Revenue
A medtech startup can spend three to seven years in development, clinical validation and certification before the first sale. That inverts normal startup accounting: for years the books are all cost and grant money, and every reporting decision, from capitalising CE-marking costs to structuring Horizon Europe cost centres, shapes what investors see. Estonia is a strong base for this: 0% corporate tax on retained profit means nothing leaks to tax while you build. This guide covers the accounting questions we work through with seed and VC-funded medtech and healthtech clients.
Read moreSaaS Startup Accounting in Estonia: From MRR to Investor-Ready Books
SaaS accounting is where the numbers founders pitch (MRR, ARR, net revenue retention) meet the numbers the law requires (recognised revenue, deferred revenue, VAT). For an Estonian OÜ selling software subscriptions across the EU and beyond, getting the two sets to reconcile is not optional: it is what a seed+ investor checks first in the data room. This post covers why your Stripe dashboard is not your income statement, how annual prepayments create deferred revenue, which VAT regime applies to B2C versus B2B digital sales, and the metrics package venture investors expect a funded SaaS company to produce every month.
Read moreEdtech Accounting in Estonia: What Startup Founders Need to Get Right Before the Next Round
Edtech startups mix subscription software, course sales, school contracts and public grants in one ledger, and each of those streams follows different accounting and VAT logic. An Estonian OÜ gives an edtech company a clean base: 0% corporate tax on retained profit, e-Residency for remote founders, and a reporting regime investors already trust. This guide covers the questions we work through with seed and VC-funded edtech clients: B2B vs B2C revenue, deferred revenue on course platforms, the education VAT exemption, school-year seasonality, and what a data room expects to see.
Read more77 Days Left: What the Estonian VASP-to-CASP Transition Looks Like From Here
Today is 14 April 2026. Estonia's 18-month MiCA grandfathering window under Article 143(3) closes on 1 July 2026 — 77 days away. This post is a practitioner's update on where dossiers realistically stand, why a pending application is not a continuous licence, and what we are doing with clients who still have a shot at authorisation before the cap.
Read moreFIE → OÜ: When the Switch from Estonian Sole Trader to Private Limited Company Actually Pays Off
Switching from FIE (füüsilisest isikust ettevõtja, the Estonian sole trader) to OÜ (osaühing) is not automatically a tax win. The honest answer depends on three numbers: annual net profit, how much of that profit the owner actually needs to draw personally this year, and the administrative cost of running the OÜ. This post walks through the break-even we use with clients at €20k, €50k and €100k profit, the non-tax reasons that often decide, and the timing window that keeps VAT reconciliation out of the picture.
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