Most of the entities in Poland (except for sole proprietaries) are required to submit their financial statement to the court (Krajowy Rejestr Sadowy – KRS) by September of the next year. It is then published on the special website, for anyone to read. However, it is sometimes not obvious how to read this – in this article we will show you how to access those financial statements, and how to make it readable.
Looking for financial statements
Many websites (including rejestr.io – an excellent website to check connections between companies and people) offer financial statements for a fee. But you should know, that you can access them for free! How to get them?
First, you should visit a dedicated KRS website and input the KRS number (super easy to find, also on rejestr.io). When you press Enter, sometime an error occurs (“Wymagane oczekiwanie pomiędzy kolejnymi wywołaniami”) which suggests you have tried too many times. Ignore it and try again – you should get a result page divided into columns.
Ignore the first one. In the second column, you will see the type of document. What kind of documents can you find here?
Roczne sprawozdanie finansowe – financial statement
Those are the numbers: Profit and Loss Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, additional notes
Sprawozdanie z działalnosci – activity report
A written statement of the board on the activities of the company in the last year and plans for the future
Uchwala o zatwierdzeniu rocznego sprawozdania finansowego – board resolution on accepting the financial statement.
In Poland, the Board needs to sign the financial statement and accept it by issuing a resolution.
Uchwała o podziale zysku lub pokryciu straty – Resolution on profit
This is where the shareholders decide whether to take a dividend from the company, or to keep the money in the entity
Opinia biegłego rewidenta – Auditor’s opinion
Only entities traded on stock exchange need to have their statement signed by auditor.
Reading financial statements
To read the financial statement, you have to click on “Pokaz szczegoly” in “Akcje” column. Then, click on “Pobierz dokumenty”. You will see the list of documents attached, and can download them – by clicking “Pobierz” next to the document name.
How to read downloaded financial statements? Sometimes the downloaded file is in .pdf format, you may open it with any file reader. It is more complicated when it is xml.
To read the .xml file that you have downloaded, you should go to another website. There, you have two options:
- You may click “Wczytaj sprawozdanie”, and then “Zaladuj plik”. Choose the just downloaded xml file, click “Dalej” and then “Pobierz PDF”. You will download the financial statement in pdf file
- You may click “Wizualizacja sprawozdan”, and then choose the downloaded file. You will see the financial statement in html, easier to translate. By clicking “Pobierz”, you can decide in what format you want to download it.
