Assets and liabilities must be valued separately. No offsetting can be made between items (balance sheet and income statement lines) of assets and liabilities in the balance sheet or between items of expenses and income in the income statement.

Unless an exceptional change occurs in the situation of the trader, natural or legal person, the presentation of the annual accounts as well as the valuation methods used cannot be modified from one financial year to another. If changes occur, they are described and justified in the notes.

The accounts are drawn up on the basis of prudent assessments, in order to avoid the risk of transferring, to future periods, present uncertainties likely to affect the company's assets and results.

For the preparation of the annual accounts, the trader, whether a natural or legal person, is presumed to continue its activities.

The various users of accounting information (owners, managers, personnel, third parties and the State) need periodic information. It is necessary to determine the results of the past management of the company and to foresee the future results, and thus to divide the continuous life of the companies into periods or accounting periods. In addition, expenses and income belong to a specific year.

The opening balance sheet of a fiscal year must correspond to the closing balance sheet of the previous fiscal year.

Accounting uses the monetary unit without taking into account changes in its purchasing power. It therefore assumes that the monetary unit is a stable unit of measurement and that monetary units from different periods can be added together (no discounting).

The regularity and sincerity of the accounts are assessed in relation to the translation of the knowledge that the directors have of the reality and the relative importance of the events recorded.

Beyond compliance with the rules and principles, the essential problem is to provide the various users of financial documents with satisfactory information, i.e. sufficient and meaningful information to understand them.

Accounting translates information by emphasizing the economic reality of the transaction, rather than the form or terms of the transaction. In the case of certain transactions, there are difficulties in resolving accounting problems of application, some wanting to translate the legal operation, others the financial reality.