The Central Balance Sheet Office gets
a makeover in 2022
December 2021 – From January 2022, the Central Balance Sheet Office, part of the National Bank of Belgium (NBB), will make changes that may affect the way you file your annual accounts. Paper filings will no longer be possible and the online procedure will be simplified.
Login
New access procedures are planned. At present, it is only possible to log in using an identity card and a card reader. From 2022 onwards, the Central Balance Sheet Office will use the CSAM application and you will then also be able to log in using special tokens, via Itsme or an eIDAS application (electronic signature recognised at European level).
The Central Balance Sheet Office will therefore use the "e-Box Entreprise" platform. This platform already exists and allows you to manage, as via my-eBox, the official communications between you and the public institutions. The FPS Economy, the NSSO and the Flemish Tax Administration already use it.
For example, you can use it to confirm the filing of your annual accounts. At present, this confirmation is still sent in paper form, but from 2022 onwards it will only be sent to you via e-Box Enterprise.
You can find more information about the platform at www.eboxenterprise.be.
Publication
The application will also be adapted to speed up the publication procedure.
For example, the NBB will allow online payment. As in most cases the accountant is responsible for the administrative part of the filing, the new application provides for the possibility for the agent to send a secure link to his client.
Note also that the Central Balance Sheet Office will have a new account number.
The simplification of the payment procedure, together with other changes, will allow for a quick publication of the annual accounts as soon as the payment is validated.
Thanks to the new application, you will also be able to download bank data in text format.
Documents to be filed
For some time there had been talk of changing the legal templates for annual accounts. However, it seems that this is no longer on the agenda. Instead, a new application will be launched for the creation and filing of annual accounts. The various applications currently used will be replaced by a single application. The test environment for this "Filin" application has been available since the end of September.
The XBRL format that you must use for your annual accounts will be replaced by an XBRL 2.1 standard. The old XBRL format will no longer be valid from 2022. The advantage of the new standard is that your documents can be filed separately in the Central Balance Sheet Office. In concrete terms, this means that you will no longer have to file the annual accounts and other documents that may be submitted at a later date at the same time.
However, the Central Balance Sheet Office emphasises that split filing remains the exception and single filing the rule.
PDF versions
The annual accounts can be filed as a structured data file or as a PDF file. At the time of filing, structured data files (XBRL) are subject to certain arithmetical and logical checks, as is the case for VAT returns.
These checks were not possible for annual accounts in PDF format and had to be carried out at a later date, a procedure that could lead to the publication of an amending declaration. From 1 January 2021, however, annual accounts drawn up in PDF format will also be subject to arithmetical and logical checks before they are approved.
