Every Belgian company files its annual accounts with the National Bank's Central Balance Sheet Office. Financica produces the .xbrl file the National Bank's Filing application accepts, built from the same books your balance sheet and income statement are drawn from.
Before you start
The file is produced from Reports > Year-end close, and only once that page is clean. Sign off the year at the foot of that page stays unavailable while anything is blocking, and the sign-off page itself sends you back if something is. Work through the blocking checks first: an account with no statutory rubric, an unposted invoice or a residual balance on a clearing account will all be refused when the file is assembled, because each one leaves the two sides of the balance sheet apart.
You also need your organization's legal details filled in under Settings > Organization: legal form, enterprise number, registered name, and registered address. These are printed on the filing and none of them can be guessed from your books.
Signing off
On Reports > Year-end close, check that the financial year shown is the one you are filing, then select Sign off the year.
A few things are asked for that are not in your books. If you have filed with Financica before, last year's answers are already filled in, with the general meeting date moved on by a year. Check them rather than assuming: they are your declarations, and they are filed as written.
The date the general meeting approved the accounts. The filing is due within 30 days of that date, and at most 7 months after the closing date. The National Bank rejects a filing whose meeting date is inconsistent with the exercise, so this has to be the real date.
Your valuation rules. A summary of the rules is a mandatory part of the model. Financica offers a standard wording as a starting point, which you should edit to match how you actually value your stock, your receivables and your fixed assets.
Your business court. This is a mandatory mention: the National Bank refuses a filing that does not name one. It follows the judicial district your registered office is in, and Brussels has both a French-speaking and a Dutch-speaking court, so Financica asks rather than guessing. You will find it on your KBO/BCE extract. Only the courts that hear filings in the language you selected are listed, which narrows twenty-nine to a handful; nothing checks that you picked the right division within them, so read it against your extract.
The filing language. Annual accounts are drawn up in the language of the region your registered office is in: Dutch in Flanders, French in Wallonia, German in the nine German-speaking communes. Financica sets it from your postal code. If your registered office is in Brussels you may file in French or in Dutch, so pick the one your accounts are actually written in.
Changing the language rewrites the standard valuation rules in that language, unless you have already edited them, in which case your own text is left alone. It is your text that gets filed, so make sure the two agree.
Your average staff, in full-time equivalents, is also asked for. It is one of the three criteria that decide which model you file.
Running the final checks
Run final checks puts your figures through the checks the National Bank publishes, the same ones its Filing application applies on receipt. You watch them go: the count climbs, and View details shows each check as it resolves.
They are reported honestly, which means some are reported as not having run:
- checks belonging to a section your model does not have;
- checks with nothing reported to read, which is normal in a micro filing that omits most annexes by right;
- occasionally, a check Financica could not tie to a rubric. That one is our shortcoming rather than yours, and it is shown rather than counted as a pass.
A failing check is shown by what it is about — "Financial income does not add up" — with the rubrics and amounts behind it, and the National Bank's own reference for the check in small print underneath, in case you want to quote it to your accountant or the Bank's helpdesk.
Once everything holds, the year is signed off and the file becomes available to download. Your declarations are kept, and start next year off.
If the accounts cannot be filed yet
Rather than producing a file the National Bank would reject, Financica lists what is still in the way. The usual ones:
Missing from your organization settings. A legal detail is not filled in. The message names the field.
These accounts have no line in the model. An account carries a balance but its code matches no rubric of the statutory model, so its amount would be missing from your totals. Give it a valid account code.
The balance sheet does not balance. Something is unaccounted for. The year-end close checks will point at it.
The result in the income statement does not match the one carried in equity. Your two statements disagree about the year's result by more than rounding, which normally means an account is missing from one of them.
Financica cannot yet produce this model. See below.
Which model you file
Which of the statutory models applies depends on two separate things: what kind of company you are, and how big you are.
Since the Companies and Associations Code abolished capital for the SRL/BV and the SC/CV, those forms file a without capital model. Size is decided by staff, turnover and balance sheet total: you are micro, or small, when you exceed at most one of the three limits.
Financica currently produces the micro model for companies without capital, which covers most small SRL/BV companies. If your company files another model, Financica tells you rather than producing a file that would be refused, and you will need to file that one another way for now.
Bear in mind that the size criteria are assessed across the group you belong to and, after your first financial year, over two consecutive years. Financica suggests a size from your own figures alone, so check it against your situation.
Profit appropriation
Annual accounts are filed after appropriation: the general meeting has already decided what happens to the year's result before the balance sheet is drawn up. Your books hold the year as posted, which is the position before that decision.
So the appropriation is something you state, not something Financica reads. Anything the meeting sets aside in reserves, and anything it distributes as a dividend, moves out of the carried-forward result before the file is produced.
Filing the file
Financica produces the file. It does not send it. Upload the .xbrl to the National Bank's Filing application, which validates it again on receipt and asks you for the filing fee.
Keep the file: it is what you filed, and it is the reference if a figure is ever queried. Financica does not store it, because it is reproducible from your books and the National Bank keeps what you deposited.
Signing off the same year again replaces the earlier sign-off rather than adding to it. Financica cannot see whether a deposit went through, so a second sign-off before you deposit is simply you changing your mind. Correcting accounts you have already deposited is the National Bank's own rectification procedure, and is done there.
Related
- Year-end close: the checks to clear first.
- Corporate tax: booking the tax charge, which has to be in the books before the accounts can be filed.
- Balance sheet and income statement: the statements the filing is built from.