Do your own bookkeeping, with no prior knowledge

Can you keep your books without any training?

Yes, and for most sole traders it is actually the norm. Below 500 000 € in turnover excluding VAT, a self-employed individual may keep simplified books. No balance sheet, no double entry, no profit and loss account: you record what comes in, what goes out and what you are still owed.

What puts beginners off is rarely the bookkeeping itself, it is the vocabulary around it. Journal, depreciation, box 54: it sounds technical, yet behind each term sits an action that takes seconds. Half an hour a week is enough to never fall behind.

The real risk is not filing an entry in the wrong place. It is doing nothing for three months and then sorting through a shoebox of receipts, half of which have faded.

What you actually have to keep

Simplified bookkeeping rests on three journals and one annual inventory. Nothing more, and anything you add beside that, you add for your own steering.

Supporting documents must be kept for seven years. Digital copies are accepted, as long as they stay legible and complete. A photo of a receipt is enough, a lost receipt costs you the deduction.

• The sales journal: every invoice you issue, numbered in an unbroken sequence, including those the client has not paid yet.
• The purchase journal: every invoice you receive, with its supporting document attached.
• The financial journal: your bank transactions, plus your cash register if you take cash.
• The annual inventory: stock, equipment, receivables and debts outstanding on 31 December.

Preparing your own VAT return

The VAT return looks intimidating because it works with numbered boxes. In practice you always report the same four things: your turnover per rate, the VAT you charged, the VAT you paid on purchases and the balance between the two.

If your journals are up to date, those figures already exist. The return becomes a copying exercise rather than an investigation. Filing goes through Intervat, by you or by your accountant, and the balance is paid the same day.

Below 25 000 € of annual turnover you can apply for the small business exemption: no VAT charged, no periodic return. In exchange you no longer reclaim VAT on your purchases, which hurts as soon as you invest.

Your year in a handful of fixed appointments

Doing your own bookkeeping works once it becomes routine. Put these moments in your calendar and the rest follows.

The seven mistakes beginners pay for most

None of them requires accounting skills to avoid. They only require knowing about them in advance.

• Gaps in invoice numbering, or two invoices carrying the same number.
• Throwing away receipts for small purchases, when together they add up to a serious deduction.
• Spending collected VAT as if it were revenue, then having nothing left on the due date.
• Forgetting that social contributions are provisional and will be adjusted later.
• Not deducting the professional share of the car, the phone and the home office.
• Waiting until year end to check who has not paid.
• Leaving out your VAT number or a mandatory statement on an invoice, which costs your client their deduction.

When you do need an accountant

Doing your own bookkeeping does not mean doing everything alone. It means handling the daily entries yourself and calling on your accountant where the advice is genuinely worth the fee.

A meeting with a certified professional makes sense as soon as you consider a company structure, hire staff, sell abroad, apply for an investment loan, or notice that your tax burden no longer matches your figures.

Many self-employed people take the middle road: they enter everything in their own software and hand over only the filings and the advice. Fees drop, because you are no longer paying someone to type in your own receipts.

Doing your own books with Novadesko

Novadesko is built for people who are not accountants. You never see a debit or a credit: you create an invoice, you photograph a receipt, and the software files it in the right place.

You can try everything for free before deciding, with your own invoices and your own figures.

• Compliant invoices, with the mandatory legal statements and the right VAT rate per line, ready in two minutes.
• Your purchase invoices and receipts are read automatically and sorted by expense category.
• Sales, purchase and financial journals build up continuously, without you having to create them.
• Your VAT balance stays visible on the dashboard, so the due date stops being a surprise.
• Peppol is built in for the mandatory electronic invoicing between Belgian businesses.
• The export for your accountant takes one click, in the format they expect.

Frequently asked questions