Preparing Dutch annual accounts without bookkeeping: is it possible?

The short answer

With bank statements alone it cannot be done: annual accounts count the income and expenses of the financial year, even if they have not yet been paid (art. 2:362(5) DCC). You must also know the outstanding invoices, the VAT, fixed assets and loans. Records are mandatory and you keep them for seven years (art. 2:10 DCC).

Updated 30 October 2026

Key facts

Why bank statements are not enough

Annual accounts are a picture of equity and result, not a cash book. The law puts it this way: the income and expenses of the financial year go into the annual accounts, regardless of whether they led to receipts or payments in that year (art. 2:362(5) DCC). An invoice from December that you pay in January is therefore an expense of the old year and a debt on the balance sheet. You do not see it on your bank statement for that old year.

Moreover, the balance sheet consists of more than a bank balance. It also contains receivables, debts, the VAT you still have to pay, fixed assets with a book value and loans with a repayment balance. Every item has to come from somewhere. A bank account only tells you what came in and went out.

Separately, every entrepreneur has a record-keeping obligation. The board of a BV must record the financial position and everything related to its activities in such a way that rights and obligations can be known at any time, and must draw up a balance sheet and a statement of income and expenses within six months (art. 2:10(1) and (2) DCC). The retention period is seven years (paragraph 3). Anyone running a business without a legal entity has their own record-keeping obligation, art. 3:15i DCC, which refers to the same paragraphs of art. 2:10 for retention. Without a bookkeeping package you meet it with a tidy folder and an overview, but not with nothing.

What you minimally need to gather

1. Opening balance sheet. The balances at 1 January: bank, receivables, debts, equity. Without an opening balance sheet the rest does not add up. For an existing BV it comes from last year's filed annual accounts.
2. All bank transactions of the year, per account, including savings and credit card accounts. Give each transaction an account: revenue, rent, purchases, private or loan.
3. Outstanding invoices on the balance sheet date. What you have invoiced but not yet received (accounts receivable) and what you have received but not yet paid (accounts payable).
4. VAT and payroll tax. The amount you still have to pay to the Belastingdienst (Dutch Tax Administration) or get back on the balance sheet date.
5. Fixed assets and depreciation. Purchase date, amount and expected useful life of what you use for longer than a year.
6. Loans and the current account with the shareholder: opening balance, movements and closing balance.

Then you put everything in a trial balance: a list of accounts with the balance of each account in debit or credit, the totals of which are equal. What it looks like you can read at what is a trial balance and in the guide to exporting and checking the trial balance.

Case: Studio Noordzee BV

Studio Noordzee BV, a micro legal entity with two employees, has no bookkeeping package. The owner has the 2025 bank statements and a list of invoices. The amounts are excluding VAT; for simplicity we leave the VAT flows out of the comparison.

On the bank alone, revenue is € 162.000 (what came in) and costs are € 145.000 (what was paid): a result of € 17.000. With the outstanding items added it looks like this:

The difference of € 8.500 is € 18.000 minus € 7.500 minus € 2.000. The trial balance at 31 December 2025 then closes as follows:

Equity is € 50.500 (1.000 + 24.000 + 25.500). With this trial balance the balance sheet and notes can be prepared; as a micro legal entity Studio Noordzee limits itself to the balance sheet and the disclosures below the balance sheet (art. 2:395a DCC). The bookkeeping did not have to come from a package, but the information behind it did have to be complete.

How it works at Jaarrekening.io

You have two routes. In Bookkeeping you import bank statements (CAMT.053, MT940 or CSV), post them and take over the trial balance without export into the financial year of the annual accounts. Or you build the trial balance yourself in Excel and import it as an Excel or CSV file; the AI then proposes a mapping to the line items of the annual accounts, which you check. With your own Excel file, the outstanding items and the opening balance sheet are your own work.

The first set of annual accounts in your account is free, for every size class; after that, annual accounts for a small legal entity cost € 500 excl. VAT. Bookkeeping costs € 125 (micro), € 150 (small) or € 300 (medium-sized and large) per month excl. VAT.

Common mistakes

• Using the bank balance as the only balance sheet item and estimating the rest.
• Posting a payment after the balance sheet date for a service from the old year in the new year.
• Recording private expenses through the business account as costs. See private costs of the director-major shareholder (DGA).
• Not letting this year's opening balance sheet match last year's filed annual accounts.

Sources

• Art. 2:10 DCC: records and retention obligation (wetten.overheid.nl)
• Art. 2:362 DCC: true and fair view and income and expenses (wetten.overheid.nl)
• Art. 3:15i DCC: record-keeping obligation (wetten.overheid.nl)
• Art. 2:395a DCC: micro legal entities (wetten.overheid.nl)

Read more