UDIN after the audit season: the 60-day window, the 60 tax audit ceiling, and a register that keeps both

The audit reports are signed, the deadline has passed, and the work feels finished. For UDIN it is not: every document signed in the rush still needs its number within 60 days, and from this year the portal also counts each partner's tax audits. Both are easy to keep once the firm records each signing on the day it happens.

Which documents need a UDIN

ICAI made UDIN compulsory in three steps: for all certificates from 1 February 2019, for GST and tax audit reports from 1 April 2019, and for all other audit, assurance and attestation work from 1 July 2019.¹² In practice, anything a member signs in practice that certifies or reports on financial information needs one. The point of the number is that regulators, banks and other authorities can check a document against what the member registered on the UDIN portal.¹

The 60-day window

ICAI's announcement of 1 April 2026 restates the rule: the UDIN must be generated within 60 days from the date of signing.³ The same announcement gave a one-time window, from 1 to 30 April 2026, for documents signed between 22 October and 22 November 2025 that could not get a UDIN while the portal moved to its new version. That window has closed, and the 60 days apply to everything else.³

This season's dates make the window concrete. The tax audit report for AY 2026-27 was due by 21 October 2026, after CBDT Circular No. 07/2026 extended it, and audit-case returns are due by 21 November.⁵ A report signed on 21 October needs its UDIN by about 20 December. Our recommendation is not to wait: generate it the day the report is signed, and treat the 60 days as the limit for the few that slip.

The ceiling of 60 tax audits

ICAI's FAQs of 14 May 2026 explain the ceiling the UDIN portal now applies:⁴

• It is 60 tax audit assignments per member in a financial year, under the Chartered Accountants (Limit on Number of Tax Audits) Guidelines, 2025, with effect from 1 April 2026.
• It counts Form 3CA under the third proviso to section 44AB, and Form 3CB under sections 44AB(a) and 44AB(b), including the combined Form 3CB. Form 3CB under sections 44AB(c), (d) and (e) does not count.
• The count goes by the date of signing of the tax audit report, not the date the UDIN is generated.
• The portal adds up every tax audit UDIN a member generates, in their own name and in every firm they are a partner of.

So a partner who signs for two firms has one count, not two. Our recommendation is to keep that count in the register, per partner, and to look at it before a report is signed, not when the portal refuses a UDIN.

The register's columns

One line per signed document, filled in on the day it is signed:

• the date of signing, and the date 60 days later;
• the client, and the document: certificate, tax audit report, GST audit, other attest work;
• for a tax audit, the form and the clause of section 44AB, so the count knows whether it applies;
• the partner who signed, and their running count of tax audits this financial year;
• the UDIN, and the date it was generated;
• where the signed copy with the UDIN was sent.

A register like this also answers the question a client asks three months later: which number went on which certificate. It sits well next to the client file you set up at onboarding, as in our client onboarding checklist.

Messages you can copy

These go to your own team, and the last one to clients. Replace the words in brackets.

The year's filing dates are in our compliance calendar, and the papers behind each return in our ITR documents checklist.

What can run by itself

• The register line, made when a signed document is saved in the client's folder, with the date 60 days later worked out, as in our document processing.
• The weekly list and the 15-day reminder, sent only for documents with no UDIN recorded, as in our client reminders.
• The count per partner, kept across firms, with the message at 50.
• The client email, with the UDIN filled in, once it is recorded.

What stays with your team

• Generating the UDIN on the portal, which is the member's own act.
• Which assignments to accept when a partner is near the ceiling.
• Documents that were signed but not issued, where a partner decides what the register should say.

More of what we write for CA practices is on the blog.

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