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. 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.
Producing the file
On Reports > Year-end close, check that the date shown is the financial year you are filing, then select Download XBRL.
Two things are asked for that are not in your books:
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 average staff, in full-time equivalents, is also asked for. It is one of the three criteria that decide which model you file.
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.
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.