Checking the financial position of a supplier or customer with the annual accounts

The short answer

Retrieve the filed annual accounts from the KVK (the Dutch Chamber of Commerce) and calculate three things: solvency, current ratio and working capital, for at least two years. Compare the result with the sector. A balance sheet says nothing about turnover, order book or payment behaviour, and is often already a year old: for a large risk, ask for recent figures yourself.

Updated 30 October 2026

Key facts

What a filed balance sheet can answer

Annual accounts are written to give an account, not to give you a credit opinion. Still, a filed balance sheet answers some questions that matter for a business relation, and leaves others open.

How to read the balance sheet, in six steps

1. Check the document. Does it show the right KVK number, which financial year does it cover, and have the annual accounts been adopted or does it state that this has not yet happened (art. 2:394(2) DCC)? In a prepared but not adopted version the figures can still change.
2. Make the balance sheet balance. Add up assets and liabilities and see whether the totals are equal. If cash and cash equivalents are a separate line next to a subtotal of current assets, check whether that subtotal already includes them. Let the balance sheet total decide, so that you do not count the cash twice.
3. Calculate three ratios, for two years. You find solvency by dividing equity by the balance sheet total. The current ratio is current assets, cash included, divided by current liabilities. Working capital is the difference between those two. The prior year is shown next to the financial year the balance sheet covers (art. 2:363(5) DCC): one document therefore already gives you two years.
4. Compare the result with a benchmark. According to the KVK, financiers consider a solvency of 25% to 40% healthy, and a current ratio of 1,2 to 1,5 counts as healthy; according to the KVK a result below 1 is not a sign of a healthy company. The KVK itself adds that the standard for solvency differs per industry, per type of company and per financier. So also compare with companies from the same balance sheet class and sector, as below.
5. Look at the composition. Do inventory and receivables grow faster than cash? Has debt shifted from long to short? Is there a debt to the shareholder or a group company in there? A small legal entity also discloses for which part of the debts security has been given (art. 2:375(3) DCC); look that up in the notes.
6. Put your own risk next to it. How much do you lose if this party does not pay, and how does that amount relate to its own equity and cash and cash equivalents? That tells you how much uncertainty you can bear.

How to request the document and what it costs is in requesting annual accounts from the KVK; the basics of reading are in how do I read annual accounts?. If the newest document contains the figures of the year before, one document is enough for a comparison of two years. According to the KVK tariff overview of 1 January 2026, downloading costs € 3,90.

What is normal? Look at the lowest quarter

The median of a balance sheet class shows what an ordinary company has. For a check on a business relation the lower end is more interesting: that is where the party you would worry about sits. Below are the lowest 10%, the lowest quarter and the median for financial year 2024, from the KVK Open Dataset. These are balance sheet classes based on the balance sheet total, not size classes in the sense of the law.

• The benchmark is a lower limit. Whoever reaches exactly 25% solvency in small sits between the lowest 10% (7,8%) and the lowest quarter (40,0%) of its class. What financiers consider healthy according to the KVK is a target value and not a description of what an average company has.
• A current ratio below 1,0 is not rare. In micro, medium-sized and large, even the lowest quarter is below it (0,81, 0,79 and 0,50); in small it is 1,17. A low ratio is therefore more a reason to look at the composition than a verdict. A current debt to a group company or shareholder depresses the ratio, and whether that is a risk depends on who the creditor is and what has been agreed.
• For micro, negative equity is not unusual. About a quarter of the micro balance sheets had a solvency of zero or lower (lowest quarter: −0,5%). By itself that says little; the size of the shortfall and the development over two years say more.

The figures differ per sector; the tables are at solvency by sector, current ratio by sector and working capital by sector.

Example: a customer that declines for two years

Fictional example: Voorbeeld Groothandel B.V., nine employees, net turnover of € 4,2 million and a balance sheet total of € 1,0 million. That puts it in balance sheet class small and in section G (wholesale and retail trade). You are considering supplying it goods for € 80.000, payable after 60 days. On 28 October 2026 its newest filed balance sheet is the one at 31 December 2024: almost 22 months old. The annual accounts for 2025 may still follow until 31 December 2026 (art. 2:394(3) DCC).

For 2023, the solvency of 40,0% sat between the lowest quarter (27,2%) and the median (53,0%) of small in section G. For 2024 it is 25,0%: below the lowest quarter of 27,5%, but still well above the lowest 10% (3,5%). The current ratio follows the same path, from 2,00 (lowest quarter 1,31, median 2,18) to 1,25, below the lowest quarter of 1,31. Working capital shrinks from 40,0% to 16,0% of the balance sheet total, just above the lowest quarter of 14,9%.

If you only test the current ratio, little stands out: 1,25 is still within the rule of thumb of 1,2 to 1,5. The composition tells more. Current assets stayed almost the same (€ 800.000 and € 810.000), but cash fell from € 140.000 to € 30.000 while inventory and receivables grew. If you leave inventory out of consideration, as the quick ratio does, the coverage of the current liabilities drops from 1,30 to 0,74: more than a quarter of those debts can only be paid if the inventory is sold or the bank steps in.

What you do not see here is why equity fell by € 150.000. A loss and a dividend payment give the same picture on the balance sheet, and a small legal entity keeps the profit and loss account out of the register. It also remains unknown whether the receivables grew because turnover rose or because customers pay later: the first is healthy, the second is not.

Your order is 32,0% of its equity and 2,67 times its cash and cash equivalents. The same balance sheet justifies a different decision for an order of € 8.000 than for € 80.000: the larger your exposure, the heavier the weak points weigh. What you do with it in practice:

• Ask for an interim balance sheet and profit and loss account for the current year.
• Look in your own records at how late Voorbeeld Groothandel pays its invoices now; that is newer than the balance sheet.
• Reduce the exposure: deliver in parts, ask for a down payment or wait with the next delivery until the previous one has been paid.

What a filed balance sheet does not show

• Turnover and profit of a small legal entity. They are not in the register; see requesting annual accounts from the KVK for what is public per size class.
• Everything after the balance sheet date. A small legal entity does not disclose the information on events after the balance sheet date (art. 2:396(8) DCC). The loss of a large customer or a new loan after 31 December therefore stays out of view, as does doubt about continuity that arose only later.
• Payment behaviour. How late a company pays its bills is not in the balance sheet, but it is in your own records. A list of your outstanding invoices by age says more about today than a balance sheet from a year ago.
• Dependence. Whether one customer supplies half of the turnover is shown by no ratio.
• The real value of inventory and receivables. The balance sheet shows book values; it does not know what an old inventory or a disputed receivable yields.
• Who is behind it. Director and signing authority are in the extract from the Business Register, not in the annual accounts.
• Whether the figures are correct. The KVK does not check the content of filed documents; according to the KVK, correctness is the entrepreneur's responsibility (page updated 2 April 2026). An auditor's report gives extra assurance. Only medium-sized and large legal entities must have their annual accounts audited (art. 2:393 DCC); for a small or micro BV (private limited company), a missing report therefore says nothing by itself.

If the annual accounts are missing or too old

The law gives a BV twelve months after the end of the financial year to make the annual accounts public (art. 2:394(3) DCC). A balance sheet at 31 December 2024 can therefore be the newest on 28 October 2026 without anyone breaking the law. Being late once is not an exception either: in a sample of 312.943 filings, 24,3% were adopted only more than twelve months after the end of the financial year. Half were adopted within 5,4 months and three quarters within 11,0 months. See late-adopted annual accounts.

Not filing annual accounts several years in a row is a different story. The KVK writes that a business relation that does not do so on time, or at all, several years in a row may also be careless with other agreements (page updated 2 April 2026). It is therefore a reason for caution, not proof. Then it is not the ratio but the absence that is the fact, and you ask the party for figures yourself.

• No annual accounts at the KVK because the legal form does not have to file (sole proprietorship, ordinary vof or cv): ask the party for figures yourself; the steps to check this are in requesting annual accounts from the KVK.
• A subsidiary with a 403 statement: according to the KVK it does not have to file its own annual accounts, and the parent company is then jointly and severally liable for the debts arising from legal acts of the subsidiary (art. 2:403(1) DCC). Then assess the parent: that guarantee is only as strong as the parent itself.

When do you ask for figures yourself?

Do not ask for figures with every invoice; nobody keeps that up. Agree a few signals in advance for which you do ask, and record them in your credit policy. For example:

• your exposure is large relative to the party's equity or cash and cash equivalents;
• equity is negative or falls two years in a row;
• the current ratio is below 1,0, or the quick ratio falls while inventory grows;
• the newest balance sheet is older than a year, or there is only a prepared version;
• for a micro or small BV you find no profit and loss account and the order is large;
• the party itself pays you later than agreed.

What you ask for

An interim balance sheet and profit and loss account for the last closed month or quarter, and an overview of outstanding receivables from customers by age. How the party reacts to that request also says something.

What you can do if the figures do not reassure you

You do not have to refuse. A down payment or prepayment, delivery in parts, a bank guarantee, credit insurance, a retention of title in your terms or a guarantee from the parent company reduce the risk. Which measure fits, you discuss with your lawyer or insurer; this is not legal advice.

Your own balance sheet is read too

What you do here with someone else's balance sheet, your customers, suppliers and bank do with yours. Whoever files on time gives them something to rely on; whoever files nothing becomes the case this article describes.

If you prepare the annual accounts yourself, the first one in your account at Jaarrekening.io is at zero euros, regardless of size class; see preparing free annual accounts and what do annual accounts cost?.

Source and date of the figures

Figures: KVK Business Register Open Dataset of Annual Accounts, processed by Jaarrekening.io, CC BY 4.0, downloaded and processed on 2 November 2026; the sector figures are those of section G, balance sheet class small, for financial years 2023 and 2024. The example is fictional. Benchmarks and remarks of the KVK: pages read on 28 October 2026 and per heading again on 29 October 2026 (updated on 9 March 2026 and 2 April 2026). The tariffs are those of the KVK tariff overview of 1 January 2026.

Sources

• KVK: Check the financial position of a business relation via the annual accounts (updated 2 April 2026, in Dutch)
• KVK: Determine the viability of your business (benchmarks for solvency and current ratio, updated 9 March 2026, in Dutch)
• KVK: Requesting annual accounts (in Dutch)
• KVK: Tariff overview of 1 January 2026 (pdf, in Dutch)
• KVK: Business Register Open Dataset of Annual Accounts (CC BY 4.0)
• Statutory text art. 2:394 DCC: the period within which the annual accounts must be public (wetten.overheid.nl, in Dutch)
• Statutory text art. 2:396 DCC: what a small legal entity omits when making public, paragraph 8 (in Dutch)
• Statutory text art. 2:375 DCC: liabilities, paragraph 3 (security) (in Dutch)
• Statutory text art. 2:403 DCC: liability of the parent company (in Dutch)
• Statutory text art. 2:363 DCC: the figures for the preceding financial year, paragraph 5 (in Dutch)
• Art. 2:393 DCC: audit of the annual accounts by an accountant (wetten.overheid.nl, in Dutch)
• Art. 2:380a DCC: events after the balance sheet date in the notes (wetten.overheid.nl, in Dutch)

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