How do I test annual accounts software with my own figures?

The short answer

A closed financial year shows whether software takes over your figures correctly. Compare line items, adjustments and notes with your own file.

Legal basis: art. 2:10 and 2:363 DCC

Which figures do you use for a trial?

For a trial, use annual accounts whose composition you already know. That way you test the processing rather than investigating your bookkeeping at the same time. Take an anonymised trial balance, the final adjustments and the related notes. Deliberately choose a file with at least one difficult item, such as a loan with a current portion.

Record the expected outcomes beforehand. Note the balance sheet total, result after tax, equity, bank balance and tax liability. Ask the supplier to read in the same data without first adjusting it by hand. Then follow an ordinary turnover account, an account with a negative balance and a balance sheet account with an unclear description. The last two in particular show whether the programme makes exceptions visible. A balanced balance sheet does not prove that all items are in the right place. A wrongly classified loan can make the balance sheet balance while the reader gets an incorrect picture of the payment obligations.

How do you test adjustments and notes?

Next, test an adjustment that you make deliberately. For example, increase the accountancy costs still to be paid by an amount of your choice and check where the counter-entry, the result and the equity change. Then reverse this trial entry. See whether a recognisable trail remains with date, explanation and user. That is not a statutory approval of the software, but a practical way to assess reproducibility. Art. 2:10 DCC requires records from which rights and obligations can be known. Therefore also ask whether you can export the underlying data yourself if you leave later.

Read the text output as critically as the figures. Has the package included an accounting policy for inventory although your business has no inventory? Is there a standard sentence about security although a bank in fact holds a pledge? Compare the prior-year figures and check whether a changed classification is explained where necessary. Art. 2:363 DCC is relevant for presentation and comparability. Do not leave a generic text in place just because the system marks it as completed. A good trial shows which choices you have to make yourself and where a professional assessment remains necessary.

Which export should you keep?

Finish the test with a full export and have someone who was not at the demonstration read it. Can this person recognise the financial year, the status and the relationship between report and source file? Ask separately how technical validation and actual filing work, if those parts are in the quote. Keep your test findings in a short acceptance list with concrete passed and failed steps. Give the supplier the chance to repair a wrong setting and repeat only that step. That way you prevent a smooth demonstration from outweighing the errors that occur in your daily files.

How it works at Jaarrekening.io

In Jaarrekening.io you can run such a trial with your own figures without paying: the first annual accounts in your account are free, for every size class, and you enter no payment details. Read in the trial balance or the XAF audit file and compare balance sheet total, result and equity with your own file. The free annual accounts are one per account: if you use them for a closed test year, you pay for the next financial year by size class.

What the free first annual accounts include →

Sources

• Dutch Tax Administration (Belastingdienst): setting up your records
• KVK: what do the annual accounts consist of?

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