What a Belgian sports club must do every year

First: which set of books does your club owe?

Belgian clubs are usually set up as a non-profit association — ASBL in French, vzw in Dutch. The answer below settles the shape of your accounts and where they are filed. A non-profit keeps simplified accounts for as long as it does not exceed more than one of these four thresholds:

• 5 employees, annual average
• €391,000 in income other than non-recurring, excluding VAT
• €1,562,000 in total assets
• €1,562,000 in total liabilities

Crossing a threshold only counts if it repeats: it takes two consecutive financial years to switch, in either direction. Below them, the accounts fit in a statement of income and expenditure; above them, they go double-entry and are filed with the National Bank rather than the court registry.

These amounts are indexed and go up from time to time; check them if your club is anywhere near. A hundred-member club with no staff is nowhere close, and that is the case this page describes.

The word large means something else, and confusing it with this test is the common mistake. The Code reserves it for far higher thresholds — 50 employees, €11,250,000 in turnover, €6,000,000 in total assets — which govern the format of the published accounts. A non-profit can therefore owe double-entry bookkeeping without being a “large association” at all.

The general meeting, within six months

The ordinary general meeting is held within six months of the close of the financial year. Close on 31 December and the meeting must be held before 30 June.

It approves the accounts, votes the next year's budget, and discharges the directors. That discharge is not a formality, but it is not immunity either: it runs towards the association, and covers the management as the meeting knew it. What was kept from the meeting is not covered, nor is what a third party holds against the directors.

Send the accounts and the budget with the notice of meeting, or say in it where members can consult them beforehand — the statutes settle the detail. They are not to be discovered on the night. Anyone seeing the figures for the first time in the room cannot meaningfully discuss them.

The accounts, and where they go

Once approved, the annual accounts are filed within thirty days.

A small non-profit files with the registry of the enterprise court, in its own file — not with the National Bank, which receives those keeping double-entry books. Filing is free. Provide two copies: the second comes back to you and is your proof of filing.

Failing to file is not a harmless oversight: the court can order the dissolution of a non-profit that has not filed its accounts (article 2:113 of the Code of Companies and Associations), on the application of a member, an interested third party or the public prosecutor, or on referral from the chamber for enterprises in difficulty. One missed financial year is enough, and the action opens seven months after that year closes. The remedy is in the same article: filing the missing accounts before the close of pleadings stops the dissolution.

The register of members

Every non-profit keeps a register of its members at its registered office. The Code of Companies and Associations makes this an obligation in its own right, separate from everything above.

It lists, for each full member, surname, first name and address — or the name and registered office for a legal entity. It is updated on every arrival and every departure, not once a year.

A properly kept member file serves as that register, on three conditions: that it holds what the law requires, that it is current, and that only one version is authoritative. So it is not an extra document to produce annually — it is the list you already keep, kept properly.

The UBO register, to be confirmed every year

The UBO register records the association's beneficial owners: the directors, the people entitled to represent it, those in charge of day-to-day management, those in whose main interest it was set up or operates, and anyone else exercising ultimate control over it. In a club the first three almost always overlap. The founders sometimes quoted are a category of the foundation, not of the non-profit.

Two distinct obligations attach to it, and the second is the forgotten one: any change is registered within the month, and every year you must confirm that nothing has changed. The confirmation is one button inside the register. A year without changes is not a year without a task.

When the committee changes

A director's appointment or resignation is published, and the association's data at the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises is updated. So is a move of the registered office.

This is the most fragile moment in a club's life, and not only administratively: it is when the member file, the passwords and the memory of the accounts leave with the person leaving.

The calendar, in one place

• Within six months of closing — general meeting: accounts, budget, discharge
• Within thirty days of approval — file the accounts with the court registry
• Once a year — confirm the UBO register
• Continuously — register of members at the registered office, kept current
• Within a month of a change — UBO, Crossroads Bank, publication of directors