The Register of Financial Statements started its activity within the Serbian Business Registers Agency on 1 January 2010. A comprehensive information system was created by integrating a large amount of financial data and status-related data, thus ensuring the availability of complete and timely data and information on legal entities and entrepreneurs in one place, and in line with European Union standards.
The Financial Statements Register, as an integrated hub of comprehensive, updated and timely information on legal entities contributes to the creation of a safer and more favorable business climate, to the reduction of the structural risk in the real sector and financial system, to the improvement of information and safety of investors, to increased competitiveness of the domestic economy and to the stimulation of the foreign investment inflow. Additionally, the integration of such data is of special interest to state agencies and institutions for the needs of statistical monitoring of the economy, analyses and diagnostics of macroeconomic trends in the country, as well as decision-making in economic, monetary and fiscal policy areas.
The receipt and processing of financial statements and the publication of data on financial results of the activity of enterprises and other business entities has a tradition that spans half a century; they were initially published by the State Accounting Department (SDK) and the Payment Transactions Office (ZOP). The development of solvency-related services started on 14 January 2002 with the establishment of the Solvency Center, as an organizational unit of the Payment Transactions Office, and when this institution was closed in 2003, the Solvency Center within the National Bank of Serbia took over the ZOP accounting data archives from 1994 and created an electronic database. At the same time, in line with applicable regulations, the Center carried on with the receipt and processing of financial reports, expanding the database with new accounting data and improving solvency-related services.
Starting from 2010, the filing, verification, processing and publishing of financial statements and solvency-related services are performed by the Serbian Business Registers Agency, based on the authorities defined in the law, through the Financial Statements Register that it established. The Serbian Business Registers Agency (SBRA) took over case-files, documents, archives, databases, the tools for work, the required number of staff from the National Bank of Serbia, as well as part of the information system and required IT equipment, and continued improving the quality of information in the country – raising the quality of financial reporting and developing solvency services, aligning them with modern business processes.
With the new Law on Accounting, which came into effect in July 2013, a set of novelties was introduced in the domain of financial reporting, starting from 2015. The most important novelty is the electronic filing of financial statements with the Serbian Business Registers Agency, with the qualified electronic signature of the authorized representative. At the same time, the volume of financial reporting data is aligned with the financial strength of the filing entity, while data for statistical and other needs are delivered separately from the financial statements. Additionally, the transparency of financial reporting has been improved, considering that all filing entities are required to publicly disclose the complete set of financial statements and documents attached to these statements on the SBRA website, and consequently, even incomplete and computationally inaccurate financial statements of legal entities and entrepreneurs who did not eliminate the identified shortcomings are also published along with the complete and computationally accurate financial statements. A special information system was developed in the Serbian Business Registers Agency (SBRA), within the Financial Statements Register, for the purpose of implementing a new model of financial reporting which guarantees a standardized procedure of data entry and delivery of reports for statistical and other needs, financial statements and documents filed in support of financial statements, in the form of electronic documents. This system also enables the standardized electronic processing of data, the publishing of data and documents in accordance with the Law on Accounting, the storage and keeping of electronic documents and a standardized procedure for the delivery of data and documents to all interested users, in other words the prompt delivery of the Register’s services.
The Financial Statements Register is a centralized, public, integrated, electronic database of complete and computationally accurate financial statements and supporting documents in line with the Law on Accounting, and of data on solvency of enterprises, cooperatives, institutions and entrepreneurs.
The Register also keeps a separate database for statistical and other needs, and a separate documentary database containing all documents and acts delivered to the Register, including records on filing entities with the basic status data on legal entities and their authorized representatives, and entrepreneurs.
The Financial Statements Register is a source of data for studying the economic trends in Serbia, analysing the financial standing and performance of legal entities and entrepreneurs and assessing the risk of doing business, all for the purpose of providing reliable information to users.
The financial statements are a structured presentation of the financial activities and business changes in a reporting period, designed to provide information on the financial standing, performance, financial success and changes of financial standing of a legal entity or entrepreneurs that are of interest to a wide range of users in making business decisions.
The database of the original financial statements, as an integrated electronic database, contains data from complete and computationally accurate financial statements and documents referred to in Article 34 of the Law on Accounting, of all legal entities – enterprises, the National Bank of Serbia, banks and other financial institutions regulated by the National Bank of Serbia, insurance companies, leasing companies, pension funds and voluntary pensions fund management companies, investment funds and investment funds management companies stock exchanges and broker-dealer companies, Central Securities Depository and Clearing House, payment institutions, factoring companies, cooperatives, institutions, other legal entities and entrepreneurs keeping books of account according to the dual bookkeeping system. The database contains individual data from the financial statements of all these groups of legal entities starting from 1994 (for stock markets and broker-dealer companies from 2000, for entrepreneurs from 2004, for financial leasing companies and voluntary pension fund management companies from 2006, for investment fund management companies from 2007, for close-end/private investment funds from 2008, for factoring companies from 2013, for the Central Securities Depository and Clearing House and payment institutions from 2016), standardized in line with regulations applicable in the reporting year.
The database for statistical purposes is a centralized and integrated electronic database of computationally harmonized data from the reports for statistical purposes that include the Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss Account and Statistical Annex, that are filed by the legal entities and entrepreneurs for the business year equivalent to a calendar year. Aggregated data for statistical and other purposes are considered as official data on the financial standing and performance of legal entities and entrepreneurs based in Serbia.
Solvency data are disaggregated by groups, separately for the enterprises and cooperatives, for the institutions and for the entrepreneurs, and they are compiled on the basis of complete and computationally accurate financial statements and other data kept in the database of original financial statements, aggregated data and indicators calculated on the basis of financial statements and data used for statistical and other purposes and data acquired from other relevant state institutions. These are standardized and harmonized with the European Union directives and international accounting standards and rules of financial analysis, which enables comprehensive reporting on solvency in a quick and a simple way.
Data on solvency are the starting point for any economic and financial analysis of the activity of enterprises, cooperatives, institutions and entrepreneurs over time, and for evaluating their business performance and financial capacities, i.e. their relative position in relation to the environment and overall economic trends.
The solvency database kept by the Register is a centralized, integrated, standardized, public, electronic database containing objective and standardized data and indicators for evaluating the solvency of enterprises, cooperatives, institutions and entrepreneurs, and the assessment of the solvency of enterprises that are based in Serbia. The solvency database contains complex, interlinked databases, specifically the database of original data and the database of derived data.
The continuing advancement of solvency-related services is based on a permanent development and improvement of two methodologies – the methodology for the standardization of data and indicators in comparative time series and the methodology for evaluating the enterprises’ ability to pay a debt, thus enabling reliable information on the solvency of enterprises, cooperatives, institutions and entrepreneurs, not only through data and indicators, but also through standardized and specialized reports on the solvency of different structures, contents and information value (Full report on indicators for solvency assessment BON 1, Report on financial standing and business performance BON 2, Report on solvency for public procurement BON JN, Report on solvency for the evaluation of the creditworthiness of a debtor BON KS, etc.), and solvency evaluating expressed in the form of scorings.