Before you sign with a new partner, ship on account or extend payment terms, a quarter of an hour spent on what the public registers say about them is time well spent. In the Netherlands a lot of it is public, and much of it is free.
1. Find the company in the Handelsregister
Start from the KVK number — the eight-digit number a company receives when it is entered in the Handelsregister, the register kept by the Kamer van Koophandel. It is the company's primary identifier, it does not change, and it is not reissued to anyone else after the company is struck off. If you only have a name, search on that and make sure you have the right company: similar names are common, and a company may trade under several handelsnamen that differ from its statutory name.
Look at three things: whether the company is active or has been dissolved, when it was registered, and its legal form. A company founded yesterday is not a bad sign in itself, but it does mean you have no history to judge it on. Note too whether you are looking at the legal entity or at one vestiging — a branch has its own number and its own address, and the entity behind it is what you actually contract with.
2. See who can bind the company
The question that matters is narrower than “who owns it”: it is whether the person negotiating with you can sign for the company at all. A KVK extract (uittreksel) names the directors and states their vertegenwoordigingsbevoegdheid — whether each may act alone or only jointly with another. A contract signed by someone authorised only jointly is a problem you want to find before signing, not after.
Beneficial ownership is a separate register and a separate question. The UBO register has not been open to the general public since 2022, so unlike the directors, you cannot simply look it up.
3. Check the insolvency register
This step is harder in many countries and in the Netherlands it is free and instant. The Centraal Insolventieregister shows whether proceedings have been opened — a faillissement, a surseance van betaling, or a debt restructuring. An opened case changes everything: payments can later be challenged by the trustee, and your claim joins a queue.
4. Check the VAT number
If a partner invoices you with VAT, they must be registered for it. Check the btw-identificatienummer — NL, nine digits, the letter B and two more digits — in the European Commission's VIES system. VIES answers for every EU member state, so a foreign supplier is verified in exactly the same way.
One thing not to confuse: the number on the invoice may be the btw-identificatienummer, which is public and checkable, rather than the older internal VAT number. Only the identification number is meant to be shared and verified.
5. Read the annual accounts
Annual accounts — the jaarrekening — are filed with the Handelsregister and are public. Look at the result for the period, at what the company owns, and above all at equity: if it is negative, liabilities exceed assets.
Expect less than you might hope for. Dutch filing obligations scale with size, and the great majority of companies file under the micro or small regime — which means a balance sheet and almost nothing else. Turnover and profit are simply not there for most companies, so an accounts page that shows a balance sheet and no revenue is the normal case rather than a gap in the data.
The absence of accounts is itself a signal. Filing is a legal duty with a deadline, so a trading company that has filed nothing for years is a question worth asking — though a recently incorporated company simply may not be due yet.
What it adds up to
No single one of these is a decision. Together they give a picture clear enough to decide whether to ask for payment up front, shorten the terms, or simply go ahead. And every one of them is public — you need nobody's permission to look.