Filed accounts
prove lessthan people think.

Because the law does not require it to be filled. A company that qualifies as small files an abridged schema, and one that qualifies as micro files the micro schema; neither requires turnover to be disclosed. Databases that reproduce the filings therefore show gross margin, results and balance sheet items but leave revenue blank. It is not a data failure, and the absence tells you nothing adverse about the company. Anyone treating the blank as suspicious has misread what they are looking at.

No. In a company that is not required to appoint a statutory auditor — which is most small Belgian companies — the accounts are prepared by or for the company, approved by its general meeting and filed. Filing is a publicity formality; nobody verifies the figures as part of it. That does not make them wrong, and the great majority are prepared conscientiously. It does mean the document carries no independent assurance, and a reader who assumes otherwise is relying on something that was never there.

Less current than it looks. The filing deadline runs to seven months after the close of the financial year, and the filed set then remains the most recent public picture until the next one arrives. In practice, public financial information about a small company can be anywhere from seven months to nearly two years behind the present. For a decision that turns on how a company is doing now, the register is a starting point and the company itself is the only real source.

Not necessarily, and this is the most common mistake made with these documents. Equity is what remains after liabilities are deducted from assets as they are carried in the balance sheet; it is not cash and it is not a measure of what can be paid next month. A company can show substantial equity while holding very little liquidity, usually because the value sits in participations, receivables or property. Liquidity and equity are different questions, and they are read from different lines.

The pattern, which is genuinely useful. Whether a company filed at all. Whether it filed on time. Whether it has done so consistently over many years or stopped for a while. What was published about changes to its form, its name, its objects and its officers, and when. A company with a long unbroken run of filings is telling you something about how it is administered, and a gap or a long silence is worth a question. That is a different kind of evidence from a figure, and often a more reliable one.

No, and nobody who is not a registered auditor may. What is unregulated, and what this company does, is reading filings and explaining what they say, what they omit and what questions they leave open. Certifying or auditing financial statements is reserved to registered auditors; accountancy and tax services are reserved to professionals registered with the ITAA. If a decision needs assurance rather than analysis, you need one of those, and we will say so rather than stretch the work.