The accounts are supposed to provide reliable information to investors, credit institutions or other partners regarding the business’ financial situation. This implies, among other things, that businesses must register transactions that are of importance to the size and composition of their assets, liabilities, income and expenses in an accounting system. These records must be stored in Norway for 10 years subsequent to the end of the financial year.
The financial transactions need to be updated continuously in the accounting system, but the businesses that are solely obliged to bookkeeping are not obliged to prepare annual accounts that in their turn need to be submitted to the authorities. Businesses that are obliged to accounting, however, need to prepare annual accounts at least consisting of the profit and loss statement, the balance sheet, the annual report and the notes to the accounts. This financial information is available to the public. Also, businesses that can be classified as “small businesses” (see "Rules applicable to different enterprises"), may make use of simplified accounting rules, i.e. the Norwegian accounting standards for small businesses – NRS 8 (not available in English).
Please note that even a dormant business is obliged to submit the annual accounts with appendixes, until it has been officially liquidated