Can I keep track of what's happening at my business myself?
Yes, to a certain extent you can. Many entrepreneurs manage reasonably well with a spreadsheet list, a folder of emails, and a few browser favorites to keep track of which obligations apply to their business and what remains outstanding. As long as the number of regulations stays limited and changes little, that works fine.
It becomes more difficult once your business falls under multiple European regulations at the same time, each with its own pace of changes, and once those regulations don't all come from the same source. Then the question shifts from "do I have a list" to "am I sure the list is still correct". That distinction is what this article is about.
Keeping track yourself: what that means in practice
Keeping track of what's happening at your business actually consists of two separate things. The first is monitoring: knowing that something changes, a new regulation emerges, or an existing obligation is tightened. The second is assessing: determining whether that change actually applies to your business, and what you are concretely expected to do about it.
You can organize the first part yourself with some discipline. The second part more often requires specific knowledge, and that is precisely the point where keeping track yourself transitions into something for which you need a lawyer or the competent supervisor.
What you can easily do yourself
For monitoring, there are quite a few sources you can follow at no extra cost. The Chamber of Commerce sends updates relevant to entrepreneurs, industry associations closely follow changes within their sector, and the official channels of the European Commission and national supervisors publish changes directly. Making it a habit to check those sources periodically, and keeping a simple list of which regulations apply to your business, gets you a long way.
Also documenting what is already settled, such as which dossiers exist and when they were last updated, is something you can structure yourself. Setting aside a fixed moment each quarter to review that list prevents much of the confusion that arises when information gets scattered across mailboxes and folders.
Where doing it yourself becomes harder
The difficulty does not lie in following one regulation, but in the fact that an average business has several running at the same time, each with its own rhythm. A change in product safety might only affect your packaging, a change in privacy rules might only affect part of your customer data. To assess that properly, you first need to know which regulations apply to your specific business operations, and that is different from knowing that there is a change.
Additionally, "what's happening" also means knowing when something is no longer relevant, for example because you have removed a product from your range or no longer sell in a particular country. A list that only grows and is never cleaned up eventually gives a distorted picture of what is actually happening at your business.
The difference between monitoring and assessing
It is good to keep those two separate when you decide what you do yourself and what you outsource. Monitoring, that is staying informed of changes, can be done yourself with structure and reliable sources. Assessing, that is determining whether something concretely applies to your business and what exactly that entails, is where substantive knowledge matters. reglia does not do that second part: the platforms under reglia explain the substantive implications of a regulation for your situation, reglia itself only brings together what is already known about it.
This means that an overview, however well organized, can never replace the place where you need to go for a substantive assessment of your situation. For that assessment, the path to a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority remains the correct one.
Keeping track without having to follow everything separately
What does help is to organize the signaling and tracking in one place instead of scattered across mailboxes, portals and loose notes. see which platforms there are provides a picture of where you can turn to per subject for the substantive side, while reglia itself only keeps track of what is outstanding and what has been updated.
How that overview is created exactly and what does and doesn't happen to your data in the process can be read at how reglia works explained. Frequently asked questions about what you need to do yourself and what reglia brings together for you are collected at the frequently asked questions page.
If you want to see what an overview of outstanding obligations looks like in practice, a good starting point is to check which platforms are relevant for your business and what each one covers exactly.