Our story
I have worked in finance for more than fifteen years, first in auditing, later as the person with final financial responsibility at companies. I spent much of that time on annual accounts, taxes and bookkeeping. On both sides of the table I saw the same thing: not a single company found it easy.
That stayed with me for a long time, because the annual accounts are not an exception. Every BV and NV in the Netherlands has to prepare and file its annual accounts, every year, under the same rules and within the same deadlines. For every finance team it is routine work. And yet almost everywhere the annual accounts are treated as one-off custom work: several Excel files, several Word documents, new versions all the time. One change, and the reconciliation starts all over again, from the balance sheet to the notes.
That is not down to the people who do this work. It is down to the tools. In the Netherlands, the powerful software for annual accounts and taxes is built for accounting and bookkeeping firms. For companies themselves there are bookkeeping and invoicing programs that stop exactly where it gets difficult. In between fall hundreds of thousands of companies that have their figures, know their business and sign at the end, but have no tools to do this work themselves.
I see that as a real problem, not just an inconvenience. Annual accounts are more than an obligation. Through them a company accounts to everyone who relies on its figures: shareholders and banks, suppliers and customers, its own employees and the public. Preparing the annual accounts carefully and on time is part of a company's responsibility. Anyone who takes that responsibility seriously should have tools that help and do not stop halfway.
For a long time there was little that could be done about it. The work was too varied for software: trial balances from different systems, last year's annual accounts as a PDF, texts for the notes and the management report that have to fit the company. Artificial intelligence has changed that. It now takes over the groundwork. The rules of financial reporting law and tax law are built into the software, and the decisions stay with the company. For the first time the whole process, from the first receipt to annual accounts ready for filing, fits into one program.
That is why I set this up, first in Germany as Jahresabschluss.io and now in the Netherlands as jaarrekening.io. We started with the annual accounts. Bookkeeping and taxes were added because customers asked for them. There are many good programs that record and process receipts and invoices, and they do that well. The problem is that none of these solutions, not even the modern ones, covers the whole process. Finishing the work still takes a bookkeeper or accountant, or a second and a third program. We could not find software with which a company could complete its bookkeeping, taxes and annual accounts in one place. With us, everything is now together in the cloud, and every part works with the same figures.
We hold to a few principles. Companies should have their annual accounts in their own hands and understand what they sign, alone or together with their accountant. What something costs is fixed in advance. The AI prepares, the company decides. And where the software falls short, we say so honestly.
Accounting and bookkeeping firms remain important partners. They work with their clients in the same software, spend less time on routine work and have more room for advice.
Our goal is that every company in the Netherlands can handle its bookkeeping, taxes and annual accounts carefully and on time, with software that makes every step traceable.
B. de Jong, Founder of jaarrekening.io, Berlin
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