The annual accounts of a company can be consulted via the website of the National Bank of Belgium (Central Balance Sheet Office). It allows everyone to obtain information on the financial performance (annual account), the annual report (directors’ report), the audit report and the social balance of companies, for free. However, the question often raises about the purpose of this public disclosure for SMEs and micro-enterprises. To get a deeper understanding, this research was performed to answer the question who the users of the annual accounts are and why they consult the annual accounts. This was done by survey research, on the website of the National Bank of Belgium.

Results show that 31 % of the respondents are director or manager, 22 % is accountant and 9 % is employer. When looking at the function of the respondents while consulting the annual account, half of them are a supplier or client. The third biggest group of users are accountants and bookkeepers.

The reader consults the annual account especially for the balance sheet (84 %) and the income statement (70 %). It are mostly analysts and money lenders who consult the balance sheet to search for information regarding the balance sheet structure as a whole (59 %), profit or loss carried forward (44 %), debts of more than one year (36 %) and debts of less than one year (28 %). They indicate this as useful information as they mainly focus on the liquidity, solvability and profitability of the company. The income statement is regularly consulted by suppliers and clients. Readers of the income statement are looking for the general structure of the income statement (52 %), the operating income (35 %) and the operating costs (33 %) as they mainly focus on the liquidity and the solvability of a company. Mostly potential shareholders consult the annual account for general information of the company. This concerns the name of the director/manager (35 %), the content of the annual report (30 %) and the enterprise number (22 %). The notes (36 %) and the social balance (30 %) are less consulted by the readers of the annual account. They are mainly looking for the capital and ownership structure (20 %). The social balance is mostly used for the amount of employees (26 %) and staff turnover (17 %).

82 % of the respondents indicated to be very satisfied with the information when consulting the annual accounts. Only the analysts and the money lenders were less satisfied. Overall, we can conclude that the transparency of the financial information is an advantage in Belgium, for large companies as well as for SMEs and micro-enterprises.

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