Every opportunity worth having asks you to evidence something first. Core Ledger keeps the books, works out VAT, PAYE, WHT, capital allowance and company tax as you go, and keeps the workings — so the evidence is already made by the time it is wanted.
Not capability, not demand, not the product. Somebody asks you to show them something, and the showing takes three weeks you didn't have.
Working capital, an overdraft, asset finance
Government, oil & gas, a listed buyer
Angel, VC, a strategic buyer
A second location, ten more staff, a big machine
Read down a column and you have that room's checklist. Read across a row and you find the same document being asked for again — which is the whole point.
Four different rooms. One set of paperwork.
Which is why the businesses that move fastest here are rarely the ones with the best product — they are the ones who can prove what they have already done.
And most of the bookkeeping arrives on its own — off the bank account you already use, off the invoices you are already issued. Whatever lands in the ledger once is what all of this is then built from.
Two screens from inside Core Ledger. Not a dashboard designed to impress you — the actual documents a credit committee, a tax office or a due-diligence team will ask to see.
The validation line is not decoration. Plenty of credit applications never get past it — the two totals disagree, and the file is closed before anyone forms a view about the business behind it.
A locked run keeps its own workings, so any month of any year can be reopened and justified — including by whoever inherits the job.
On 1 January 2026 the middle tier disappeared. A business that paid 20% at ₦60m of turnover pays 0% now, provided fixed assets stay under ₦250m — and pays no Development Levy either. A great many owners have not been told.
The test has two limbs, so it is a box, not a line. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs in your browser.
One exception worth knowing. The Act carves professional-services companies out of small-company status, and there is no settled guidance yet on how widely that reaches. If you are a consultancy, a law or accounting firm, or similar, treat the 0% outcome above as a question for your adviser rather than an answer.
The same conclusion, reached inside the app from posted transactions rather than from sliders — with the band, the reason for it and the carry-forward all on the page.
Small-company treatment is claimed each year, against limits that a strong year — or a single round of equipment purchases — can carry you past without any announcement. Everything else about running the company continues exactly as it did.
Turnover at or under ₦100m for the year. Fixed assets at cost at or under ₦250m, measured on what you still hold at the year end. Neither number arrives from anywhere but your own records, and a position taken on a return is a position that can be asked about.
Paying nothing and being able to show why you owe nothing are two different things. Only one of them survives a question.
A nil rate is not a nil year.
Tax payable against turnover, on a business converting a fifth of turnover into assessable profit. Nothing tapers — the rate goes from nil to 30%, and the Development Levy switches on at the same moment. The faint line is the taper people assume exists.
Turnover is the test everyone hears about. Fixed assets at cost is the other one, and it does not need a good year to trip — a run of equipment purchases can carry a modest business past ₦250m while revenue sits exactly where it was. Assets are cumulative. Nothing about last year's spending drops off.
The companies sitting under the threshold are often the ones with the most to gain from a facility, a tender, or a first outside investor. None of that turns on what you owe. It turns on what you can put in front of someone on the afternoon they ask for it.
Capital allowance is the largest deduction most Nigerian companies are entitled to, and the one most often left partly on the table — because claiming it in full means tracking every asset, every year, without losing the thread.
Assuming you pay the 30% rate. A small company at 0% gets no benefit from allowances at all.
If your own schedule spikes in year one, check it. The old regime gave an initial allowance up front and settled up with a balancing charge on disposal. Both were repealed. A schedule still built that way overstates year one and understates every year after it.
Rung one is the mechanism. Rung two is what it gets you. The shaded rung is the reason it matters at all.
An auditor signs off faster, and charges you less to do it.
Credits on eligible purchases stay yours instead of being left on the table.
Remittance evidence is standing by when you apply for the clearance a contract depends on.
Tax already paid on your behalf comes off the bill, rather than quietly lapsing.
Relief you are entitled to gets claimed in full, in every year you own the asset.
Nobody has to take your word for the number — including you.
The tax lands the moment you record a sale, an expense or a new asset, so the number is never something you find out about later.
You get to say yes to the opportunity in the week it arrives.
Each figure opens back to the transactions underneath it and the rule that produced it, so review is reading rather than reconstruction.
You answer the awkward question in the meeting, not the week after it.
The answer forks at ₦100m of turnover, so here are both sides of it. The bars are drawn to one shared scale, so the two columns can be compared with your eyes rather than your arithmetic.
Modelled, not measured. We are onboarding our first businesses now, so these are worked examples on stated assumptions rather than outcomes collected from customers. When we have the second kind, we will publish those instead.
Not a single sum in a box. Each one holds a real register — every asset, employee or invoice you enter — and shows its working line by line, on the same computation that runs inside Core Ledger.
Your whole asset register, pooled by classification and scheduled year by year — with disposals, chargeable gains, and the repealed CITA mechanic for a pre-2026 period.
Try it Payroll runA full monthly run — every employee on their own reliefs, band by band, with the pre-run checks and the remittance split by state.
Try it Period returnA full return for the period — output against input, with zero-rated and exempt kept properly apart and the filing date attached.
Try it Both sidesBoth sides at once — what you must remit by the 21st, and what you can only claim once the credit note arrives.
Try itThese formulas are public law. Anyone can work them by hand, and it is worth doing once so you know what the software is claiming. Capital allowance and PAYE will also run a pre-2026 period on the repealed rules, which is the part a spreadsheet built last year cannot do. What Core Ledger adds is doing all of it on every transaction, in every period, against books that already agree with the answer.
Reference guides on the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 and the accounting fundamentals underneath it — every figure checked against the same source material Core Ledger runs on.
Two schedules, two questions, and one sale that produces two different numbers. Only one of them ever reaches your ledger.
Only if you're carrying forward assets that already had relief claimed against them. Here's how to tell, and where the figure goes.
Debit doesn't mean money in. Credit doesn't mean money out. Once that's settled, the rest is straightforward.
The opportunities worth having rarely wait three weeks for your paperwork.
