In addition to providing general services the accountants of Lodder & Co offer you added value. After all you are faced with a very wide range of questions. We are the financial-economic sparring partners that can give you the answers.
Doing business in the Netherlands
Within our organisation we have plenty of experience and expertise enabling us to carry out virtually every kind of accountancy assignment. The fact that we are licensed by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) means that we can also audit the larger unlisted Dutch companies.
Before a decision can be taken on the nature of the assignment it is necessary to ascertain in which legal form the company is run. If it is not run in the form of a private company with limited liability (B.V.) or a public limited company (N.V.) the statutory obligations are limited in nature.
Statutory obligations
In the Netherlands, there are rules governing the preparation of annual accounts regarding a private company with limited liability (B.V.) and a public limited company (N.V.) Dutch law makes provision for financial statements and annual accounts according to generally accepted standards to such an extent as to make it clear for users of this information to form a sound opinion of, amongst other things, income and results.
Dutch law also makes provision for size criteria concerning the balance sheet total, net turnover and average number of employees, whereby the classification falls into small, medium-sized and large companies. Depending on how the company is classified there are specific requirements imposed on the annual reporting concerning format / layout and disclosure obligation requirements.
If, on two successive balance sheet dates, two of the three criteria are met for the category “medium-sized”, the company is required by law to arrange for an audit to be carried out by a competent (external) accountant and the accountancy organisation to which this person is affiliated is licensed by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) to be allowed to carry out this so-called statutory compulsory audit. As already mentioned, Ecovis Lodder & Co International B.V. has obtained the licence and is, amongst other things, the undersigned on the recommendation of the company registered as competent external auditor for carrying out such assignments.
Criteria (General)
Liable for statutory audit
Balance sheet total > 4.4 million euros
Net turnover > 8.8 million euros
Average number of employees > 50
In summary
In order to ascertain which type of assignment needs to be carried out, it is necessary to ascertain whether the company in question can be classified as a B.V. or N.V. and, if so, whether the company meets two of the three criteria on two successive balance sheet dates which would then signify a company liable for a statutory audit. If this is the case, we must carry out a statutory audit assignment whereby the work involved is considerably more detailed than, for example, in the case of a compilation assignment. A statutory compulsory audit normally takes around one month to complete.
Also if sections of the Financial Statements are used for preparation of the consolidated annual accounts of a company they will presumably have to be subject to a statutory audit based on the requirements of the parent company. This is in turn dependent on the size of company. The audit instructions from the Dutch parent company shall be decisive in this regard.
Where there is no question of a statutory compulsory audit assignment, the articles of association do not preclude a compilation assignment and the management/shareholder require no voluntary audit, or otherwise, a compilation assignment can suffice. The annual accounts are then compiled by us based on the data provided by the client in accordance with Dutch law. This is a relatively short time to complete. Generally speaking, one week is a realistic figure.
You are kindly requested to specify the legal form in which the company is/need to be runned and the criteria as set out earlier for determining the existence of any legal obligations and whether any wishes of the parent company apply. Next, we will be able to fix a timetable in mutual consultation in order to keep the turnaround time as short as possible.