Having the annual accounts of your BV prepared

The annual accounts are the closing picture of your financial year: a balance sheet, a profit and loss account and the notes. For a micro or small BV a condensed version is filed, and KVK publishes it.

That is a different document from a formal set carrying an accountant's report. The report is the part a registered firm signs, and KVK lists it among the documents a medium-sized entity files. For micro and small entities it does not appear in the list at all.

The law works in steps rather than a single deadline, and the steps stack. For a BV whose financial year runs with the calendar year:

• The board prepares the accounts within five months of the year-end.
• The general meeting can extend that by up to five months, but only in special circumstances.
• The shareholders then have two months to adopt them.
• Filing follows within eight days of adoption.
• Without an extension that puts the last filing day on 8 August.
• With the full extension it moves to 31 December.
• If every shareholder is also a director, the two-month adoption step falls away and the deadline is ten months and eight days, so 8 November.

The year-end close is not a separate project here. It is the last step of a bookkeeping that was already current, which is why it does not turn into an archaeology exercise in the spring.

• The year-end close: accruals, depreciation, provisions and the reconciliations.
• The full set of figures: balance sheet, profit and loss account and the notes.
• The set that goes to KVK, in the required digital format, quoted up front as separate work.
• The corporate income tax return that goes with it.
• A formal set carrying an accountant's report. That belongs to a registered firm.
• An audit or a review of those figures.

The year-end close is part of the monthly price, not an invoice that lands in the spring. Starter is 250 euro a month for 0 to 75 invoices, Growth 325 euro for 76 to 125, Scale 475 euro for 126 to 200. The set that goes to KVK is separate work and we quote it before we start it.

Every amount is per entity. A holding and an operating company are two sets of annual accounts, two filings and therefore two prices.

Two companies mean two administrations, two sets of annual accounts and two filings, and the flows between them have to reconcile on both sides. The management fee and the current account are where that usually goes wrong, and it tends to surface only at the year-end close.