What the register establishes

How we work

Why we put the limits of public filings first

Belgium publishes more about its companies than most countries, and the result is a quiet overconfidence. A supplier runs a prospective customer through a database, sees equity, a result and a balance sheet, and treats the output as a verdict. Three features of the system make that unsafe, and none of them is hidden. A company that qualifies as small files an abridged or micro schema, which does not require turnover to be disclosed, so the revenue line is empty by design. A company below the audit thresholds appoints no statutory auditor, so the figures carry no independent verification; filing publishes them, it does not check them. And the filing deadline runs to seven months after year end, after which the document stands as the latest public picture for another year.

The practical consequence is that public filings answer questions about administration far better than questions about trading. Did this company file? On time? Every year, or with gaps? What did it publish about changes to its legal form, its name, its objects, its directors, and when? That is real evidence, cheaply obtained, and a long unbroken record of filings says something about how a business is run that no single ratio does. By contrast, whether a company can pay your invoice next month is not in there at all, and reading equity as though it were cash is the error that leads people to the wrong answer with the most confidence.

We apply this to ourselves. This company has filed since 2006, its filings are unaudited like those of any small Belgian company, and they disclose no turnover, because the schema does not call for it. Its name, legal form and objects changed on 20 July 2023 and the publication is on the register. Anyone is free to look all of that up, and we would rather set out what it does and does not establish than let a database do the talking.