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Creating a file: a company to incorporate or an existing company

⏱ 7 min readUpdated on

A company being born and a company that already exists do not start from the same point. Fiplan asks the question before anything else: an incorporation plan starts with the contributions and the founders; an existing company's plan, with the closing balance sheet of its last financial year.

What it is for

The file sets the framework of the plan: the legal form, the dates of the financial years, the duration, the VAT status, and the starting point — the opening balance sheet of a company to be incorporated, or the prior-year (N-1) closing balance sheet of an existing company. All data entry is attached to it.

Both screens have the same layout: on the left what you enter, on the right what Fiplan derives from it. For an incorporation, the right-hand column is called “What will be recorded”: the Opening entries and the Opening balance sheet. For an existing company, it is the Summary: whether the N-1 balance sheet balances, its structure, three indicators and what Fiplan will record.

Steps

  1. Click New Dossier: the “Which financial plan do you need?” screen offers Company to be incorporated, Existing company and, soon, Self-employed.
  2. Common to both: the Client, the Dossier name, the Plan duration, the VAT status and the Legal form — private limited company (SRL / BV), cooperative company (SC / CV) or public limited company (SA / NV), read from the client's record if it is there, and then locked.
  3. Company to incorporate: the Incorporation date; Fiplan proposes the End of first financial year on the last day of the twelfth month (from 1 to 24 months). Then the Cash contribution (apport en numéraire / inbreng in geld) for an SRL or SC, or the Subscribed capital (capital souscrit / geplaatst kapitaal) for an SA, and any Contributions in kind (apports en nature / inbreng in natura), one asset per line: Account, Contributed asset, Value, Life. A line adds them up: “Total contributions — … in cash + … in kind = …”.
  4. Still for an incorporation, the Founders & contributions table: one line per founder — Full name, Role, Contribution, Shares (optional) — and their Share, which Fiplan calculates; Add a founder adds a line, the Total line adds them up. Under the table, Fiplan compares the founders' contributions with the total contributions.
  5. Existing company: a page in six steps, summarised by a contents bar at the top — 1 The file · 2 Balance sheet N-1 · 3 Loans and leases · 4 Assets held · 5 Results N-1 · 6 Tax losses, the last two optional. Each step shows its status (Done, In progress, To do or Optional) and folds up; folded, step 1 is summarised in one line, with Edit. Step 1 asks for the Last closing — financial year 1 starts the next day and lasts 12 months — and, if the client has none, the Company incorporation date (optional). The next steps each have their own article: the N-1 balance sheet, the contracts and the assets, the N-1 income statement and tax losses.
  6. Read the right-hand column: for an incorporation, debit = credit and ASSETS = LIABILITIES; for an existing company, “✓ Balanced”.
  7. Click Create the file. As long as a piece of data is missing, the button stays greyed out and the screen says which one (“Missing: …”).
The “Which financial plan do you need?” screen and its three cards.
The “Which financial plan do you need?” screen and its three cards.
A company to incorporate: client, file name, dates, a three-year duration, a €20,000 contribution, the founders table and the “What will be recorded” preview.
A company to incorporate: client, file name, dates, a three-year duration, a €20,000 contribution, the founders table and the “What will be recorded” preview.

Worked example · Boulangerie Dupont SRL

Boulangerie Dupont is a company to incorporate.

FieldValueWhere it comes from
Incorporation date4 January 2027assumption of the example
End of first financial year31 December 2027proposed by Fiplan: last day of the 12th month
First financial year12 monthscalculated
Plan duration3 years2027, 2028, 2029
VAT statusStandard VAT taxpayerthe bakery charges VAT
Cash contribution€20,000.00fully paid up, available

The contributions total line: “Total contributions — €20,000.00 in cash + €0.00 in kind = €20,000.00”. Marie Dupont, the only founder, contributes everything:

Full nameRoleContributionSharesShare
Marie DupontDirector + Shareholder20,000.00—100%
Total20,000.00100%

Under the table, in green: “The founders’ contributions equal the total contributions · €20,000.00 = €20,000.00”. Entered for only €15,000.00, the line would turn orange (“… do not equal the total contributions”) and the button would say: “Missing: allocate €5,000.00 among the founders.”

The opening balance sheet that Fiplan writes:

AssetsAmountLiabilitiesAmount
Cash at bank and in hand20,000.00Available contribution (110900)20,000.00
Total assets20,000.00Total liabilities20,000.00

If the bakery already existed and had closed its last financial year on 31 December 2026, financial year 1 of the plan would start on 1 January 2027, and its closing balance sheet would be taken over as opening entries (à-nouveaux / openingsboekingen). With the N-1 balance sheet of the next article, step 3 would stay “To do” as long as its loan is not detailed (“€10,000.00 of financial debts on the balance sheet · no contract detailed: the debt would stay frozen”), and so would step 4, as long as the oven's remaining life is missing (1 depreciable line item).

An existing company: the outline of the six steps and their states.
An existing company: the outline of the six steps and their states.

Pitfalls

An incorporation has no N-1, an existing company has no opening balance sheet. Something the company already has (a loan, a lease, a stock) comes in through the N-1 balance sheet: the asset at its net value, the debt at the outstanding principal.
At least two financial years, and two years, for an incorporation. The screen refuses a one-year incorporation plan: “A formation plan covers at least two financial years: the law requires a balance sheet projected at 12 and at 24 months (art. 5:4, 6:5 or 7:3 CCA).” It also refuses a plan shorter than two years from incorporation — a case of a short first financial year: incorporated on 1 September with a closing on 31 December, a company needs three financial years (4 + 12 months = 16 months are not enough).
The founders' contributions must make up the total contributions, to the cent. Cash and in-kind together. Otherwise, the file is not created: “Missing: allocate … among the founders”, or “… too much among the founders”. Creation itself refuses it too (FIPLAN-DOS-036).
The N-1 balance sheet must balance. An existing company cannot be created as long as the assets and liabilities of the N-1 balance sheet differ: “Missing: a balanced balance sheet (difference …)”. Likewise, if you enter the N-1 income statement, its calculated result must equal the result in the annual accounts.
SA: a minimum capital, paid up from incorporation. For an SA, the screen refuses a subscribed capital below the legal minimum (art. 7:2 of the Companies and Associations Code, CSA / WVV), and a paid-up capital below that minimum or below one quarter of the cash contribution (art. 7:11).

What it changes · opening

① Income statementNo result at opening€0.00A contribution is not income: it does not go through the income statement.
② CashThe starting cash€20,000.00The paid-up contribution, in the bank account, on the first day of the plan.
③ Balance sheetThe opening balance sheet€20,000.00Assets = liabilities: cash on one side, the available contribution on the other.

Source

Companies and Associations Code (CSA / WVV): art. 5:4 (financial plan of the SRL), 6:5 (SC), 7:3 (SA); art. 5:3 (no capital in an SRL); art. 7:2 (minimum capital of the SA); art. 7:11 (paying up the capital of the SA at incorporation); art. 1:24, § 4 (length of an exceptional financial year).

Minimum standard chart of accounts (plan comptable minimum normalisé / minimumindeling van een algemeen rekeningenstelsel, annex 1 to the Royal Decree of 21 October 2018), and the opinion of the Belgian Accounting Standards Commission (CNC / CBN) on the move from the former SPRL (SPRL / BVBA), which had capital, to the SRL without capital: the contribution outside capital, available (110) or unavailable (111).

Fiplan convention (creation-dossier.ts, creation-existante.ts): the founders table and each founder's share; the founders' contributions equal to the total contributions, to the cent; the six steps of an existing company and their status.