In tens of thousands of Tunisian small and medium-sized enterprises, the company’s treasury and the manager’s pocket effectively form a single reservoir of liquidity.
This patrimonial confusion, referred in financial auditing as the single-cash-box syndrome, is not a mere management disorder. It constitutes a fundamental dysfunction that exposes the company to three cumulative risks rarely anticipated by its managers: the loss of reliability of accounting information, increased exposure to tax audits, and the weakening of its ability to mobilize bank financing in a context where traceability paradoxically becomes a competitive advantage.
The phenomenon is embedded in an economic fabric where informality weighs heavily. The London-based World Economics Institute estimates the size of the Tunisian parallel economy at 31.6% of GDP in 2025, equivalent to 67 billion dollars in purchasing power parity, while a study published in March 2026 in the African Development Review of the African Development Bank puts the average size of this underground economy at nearly a quarter of GDP over the 1988-2023 period.
In its first national report on the Tunisian enterprise published in December 2025, the Arab Institute of Business Leaders notes that 63.7% of SMEs report being heavily challenged by the informal sector, versus 36.9% only for large enterprises, a gap that reflects the particular weakness of small-scale structures, precisely those where the single-cash-box thrives.
The pathology and entrepreneurial culture
The syndrome manifests itself through a set of recurring practices. Indeed, the manager settles personal expenses from the company’s social fund, pockets a portion of the revenue without the systematic issuance of supporting documents, withdraws or reinvests funds as needs dictate without formal accounting, and ultimately treats the company’s treasury as a natural extension of his private wealth.
This practice primarily affects the micro-enterprise fabric, which, according to World Bank data, represents about 524,000 units, or nearly 35% of Tunisia’s entrepreneurial fabric. It does not spare structured SMEs either, where it often survives as an inheritance from the early years of activity, a period during which accounting discipline is sacrificed to operational urgency.
A blatant breach of accounting standards
