The Exact SME monitor provides a current insight into the state of the Dutch economy, based on revenue, cash flow, and payment figures from 340,000 SMEs.

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The figures are anonymized and sourced from Exact Online and then aggregated. The most recent figures can be accessed by anyone via the online dashboard www.exact.com/nl/about-us/sme-monitor.

The Exact SME monitor is the most up-to-date barometer of the Dutch economy. At launch (in October 2019), three indicators were included, and this will be expanded at a later date:
 

• The average revenue growth per month, compared to the same month last year. To keep the comparison pure, only SMEs that recorded revenue in both months are included in this data (and thus have been in existence for at least a year).
• The percentage of SMEs that closed the month with a positive cash flow. The Exact SME monitor includes two indicators: cash flow (the difference between all incoming and outgoing cash flows from the past month) and the cash flow position (the status of available financial resources within the Dutch SMEs). These indicators provide insight into the financial position of Dutch companies.
• The average number of days an SME has to wait for payment after invoicing, based on all paid invoices with a payment term of 30 days – the most commonly used payment term in the Netherlands.

Industries

The figures from all administrations in Exact Online are included in the SME monitor. There are four sectors for which specific dashboards have been created: construction, trade, hospitality, and accountancy, because in these sectors enough companies use Exact Online to provide a reliable picture. We may expand the number of sectors in the future.

The figures from the Exact SME monitor are based on the anonymized data of 340,000 companies that use Exact Online for their administration. In total, there are over 1.6 million companies in the Netherlands, so over 21% of them are represented in the Exact SME monitor.

The SME sector in the Netherlands includes all companies with a maximum of 250 employees. This accounts for 99 percent of all companies. The SME sector is responsible for about 60 percent of total business revenue and provides employment for approximately 70 percent of all workers in the Netherlands. It is no coincidence that the SME sector is often characterized as the engine of the Dutch economy.

Especially smaller companies

On the first working day of each month, the data from the Exact SME monitor is updated, ensuring it is always up to date within three months. We maintain this margin for reliability. The data in the Exact SME monitor primarily comes from smaller SME organizations – up to about 20 employees. Our data analysts have extensively researched how representative the data in the Exact SME monitor are for the entire Dutch economy.

Supported by CBS data

To ensure you have a complete picture of the Dutch economy, you should actually have insight into the tax returns of all Dutch companies.

There is one organization that has this, and that is the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Every year in April, CBS publishes the economic figures from the previous year. Throughout the year, figures are also published based on samples from panel interviews. To determine how representative the data from the SME monitor are, we compared our revenue data from construction companies over the past years with those from StatLine - the public database of CBS.

The result: there is a correlation of 0.88 between the figures from CBS and those from Exact, indicating a very clear relationship.

We also compared the core figures from the Exact SME monitor with CBS figures on the development of Gross National Product over the past years. The correlation with these figures was even stronger than with CBS: the correlation coefficient was 0.96. Comparable to growth figures SRA We also compared the figures from the SME monitor with those from the Branche in Zicht (BiZ) reports from the Foundation for Registered Labor Experts (SRA), the association of accounting and consulting firms. Each year, SRA publishes figures based on annual accounts prepared by affiliated accounting firms.

SRA shows, among other things, the growth figures of Dutch companies. Companies are categorized into different categories; from growth percentages of -50% to +50%. The largest group of companies falls into the middle category of 0 to 4% growth (in 2018, this was just over 20% of the companies).

Again, we made a comparison with the figures from the SME monitor. And the distribution clearly shows the same pattern as the data from the BiZ report.

Conclusion

Based on the extensive benchmarking of our data with that of other reputable institutions, we confidently assert that the data in the Exact SME monitor are representative of developments in the Dutch economy. The reliability of the data, combined with the timeliness of the information, means that the Exact SME monitor provides a solid and especially very current picture of the BV Netherlands that can be found.

Why?

Over 20 percent of Dutch companies manage their administration with Exact, and that number is still growing. Important decisions within these companies are increasingly being made based on current data. We want to help our customers in various ways to gain insight into their operations and how they perform compared to other companies.

The Exact SME monitor provides the most current barometer of developments in the Dutch economy. Through an online dashboard that is accessible to everyone, we aim to utilize the valuable core figures from our systems in a way that adds value to many companies.

The dashboards in the Exact SME monitor are retrieved via an API from Exact Online. On the first working day of each month, this data is updated, ensuring it is always up to date within three months. We maintain this margin for reliability.