Which company details does disclosure B1 of the European Union (EU) voluntary standard for small companies (VSME) ask for?
B1 asks which option you chose, plus facts about your company: legal form, activity code, balance sheet size and turnover in euro, employees, country of main operations, and site locations and any sustainability labels. Your registration papers and accounts hold most. VSME is the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group's Voluntary standard for non-listed micro-, small- and medium-sized undertakings.
What B1 is, in plain words
B1 is the cover page of the report. It says which version of the standard you used and who the company is. Think of the first page of a loan form: name, type of business, size, address.
The standard is from the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG). B1 is the first of eleven disclosures in its Basic Module.
What the standard says you shall disclose
- Which option you chose: Option A, Basic Module only, or Option B, Basic Module and Comprehensive Module.
- Whether you left out any disclosure because it is classified or sensitive, and which one.
- Whether the report covers your company alone (individual) or your company and its subsidiaries (consolidated). For a consolidated report, the list of subsidiaries with their registered addresses.
- Legal form, with the standard's list: private limited liability undertaking, sole proprietorship, partnership, cooperative, or other (please specify).
- The activity classification code or codes, called NACE codes (Nomenclature statistique des Activités économiques dans la Communauté Européenne). Think of a NACE code as the shelf label that says what kind of business you run.
- Balance sheet size in euro, turnover in euro, and number of employees as headcount or full-time equivalents.
- Country of primary operations and location of significant assets, and the geolocation of sites you own, lease or manage.
- Any sustainability-related certification or label you hold, with its issuer, date and rating score where relevant.
Which of your records answer each item
- Certificate of incorporation or partnership deed: legal form and registered address.
- Last audited balance sheet and profit and loss account: balance sheet size and turnover. The standard asks for euro, so the rupee figures need converting. It does not name a rate in the text we read, so state the rate you used.
- Payroll or muster roll: number of employees.
- Your own list of plants, godowns and offices: the site table.
- Our reading: the standard prints NACE codes, which are European. It does not say how to translate an Indian industry code, so give the NACE code that best matches your main product and say so.
What B1 does not ask
B1 is not a test. It does not ask for any emissions or any score. Section 'B3' of the standard asks for energy and emissions, and that part is where fuel invoices and electricity bills matter.
What Senseible does here
Senseible fills the energy and emissions disclosure from fuel invoices and electricity bills. This disclosure is not part of it today; it comes from your own registers and papers.
- What is the VSME standard, and should a small supplier use it?
- How to give site coordinates in the VSME
- Headcount or full-time equivalent in the VSME
Last reviewed 2026-11-07. Facts are from the standard's own text, with the paragraph numbers named in the source line. The European Commission adopted its own standard for voluntary use in a Delegated Regulation of 3 July 2026, which is not in force until it is published in the Official Journal and may differ from this text, so ask your buyer which one it means. Our own readings are marked as such.