A firm that handles a hundred files knows each of them — on the day it opens them. Between two year-ends, life goes on: a client changes manager, a client's supplier files its accounts late, a group company appears in the Belgian Official Gazette. Nobody reads the Gazette every morning for a hundred enterprise numbers. The same goes for a foreign firm or a group finance team that follows Belgian subsidiaries, customers or suppliers.
Step by step: where to look, what to read
What is published about your clients without you knowing
- In the register (CBE): name, registered office, activities, establishment units, legal status.
- At the Central Balance Sheet Office: the filing of the accounts — and above all its absence. Once the seven-month deadline has passed, every day counts for the directors' liability.
- In the Official Gazette: appointments and resignations, registered office transfers, changes to the articles of association, dissolutions, court rulings. These publications often reveal that a client took a decision without telling you.
The three lists a firm should keep
What to look at with each signal
A filing of accounts: has equity changed sign? Does the alarm-bell procedure of the Code of Companies and Associations apply (art. 5:153 for the BV/SRL, 7:228 for the NV/SA)? Late filing by a counterparty: is your client's exposure to it covered? A publication in the Official Gazette: an appointment, resignation or office transfer changes who can bind the company — and therefore who signs the documents you prepare.
Getting organised: from one-off checks to monitoring
A one-off check works well by hand when it is occasional. Monitoring a hundred companies does not: you need a list, a source that reads each publication, and a signal that only arrives when something has changed. The public searches offer no alerts; that is precisely where a tool takes over — without replacing your reading.
Setting up monitoring for the firm
- A clients list, by enterprise number, with each one's year-end.
- A counterparties list, fed with each file (large customer, key supplier).
- A group list for structures with several companies.
- A signal at each filing, delay or publication — not a weekly report to read in full.
- A written response per type of signal (who calls, what to check).