Financial oversight

Keeping accounting records entails managing important matters. Examples include all evidence regarding your accounting records, such as invoices for expensive devices, insurance policies, payslips and annual income statements, account statements, papers from the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration and/or your health and car insurance, for example.

There is no statutory retention obligation for private individuals. However, it is handy to retain your private records for five years, because if you receive an additional tax assessment from the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration, then you have the documents which you can use to prove the contrary.

Business records and bookkeeping
If you are registered with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and therefore have your own company, you also keep business records. This includes the bookkeeping; keeping records of your company’s financial transactions.

You need an income to support yourself. Whether you are working in paid employment, do a job once in a while or are an entrepreneur, keeping track of your income and expenditure provides clarity.

There are all kind of ways to monitor your income and expenditure. You can do this by listing them in Excel. There are also apps in which you can upload your income and expenditure directly from your bank details. By analysing your own figures, you can see more clearly whether your income and expenditure are properly balanced. This is also referred to sometimes as a ‘housekeeping book’ (huishoudboekje).

National Institute for Family Finance Information (Nibud) 
It is tricky sometimes to interpret those overall figures. Are they actually ‘low’ or ‘high’? What is ‘normal’? The National Institute for Family Finance Information (Nationaal Instituut voor Budgetvoorlichting, Nibud) is an independent knowledge and advice centre in the field of household finances. Here you will find examples, articles and tools, such as a monthly budget in Excel that you can fill in directly. Or the WerkUrenBerekenaar (WorkingHoursCalculator), in which you can easily calculate how much you will earn if you work more (or less) hours.

A budget is a tool for gaining insight in advance into the income and expenditure of a situation, business or project. You list all the expected expenditure for a particular time period (for example per month/year) or project and add this up. You also list all income that you are expecting in the same time period or for that project. The way you are going to cover - or rather the way you are going to pay for the expenditure in your budget - is also referred to sometimes as the ‘financing plan’.

You can make a budget for yourself or for other people. In business situations, those people are, for example, your colleagues, project partners or financial backers. Financial backers almost always ask for a budget and a financing plan in advance. You use a budget, for example, in a grant application.