If a customer stops paying, the first question is not whether they can pay but whether they are allowed to. Dutch insolvency proceedings are published in the Centraal Insolventieregister, kept by the Rechtspraak, and it is free and open to anyone. Three different things appear there and they are not interchangeable.
Faillissement — bankruptcy
The court declares the company bankrupt and appoints a curator, a trustee who takes control of the estate. From that moment the company's management can no longer dispose of its assets, and the trustee's job is to realise what there is and distribute it in the order the law sets.
For an unsecured supplier this is usually the worst outcome. Your claim is filed with the trustee and ranks behind secured creditors and preferential claims, and in many estates there is nothing left by the time the ordinary creditors are reached.
Surseance van betaling — suspension of payments
A moratorium, granted by the court, that gives a company breathing room from its unsecured creditors while it tries to reorganise. A bewindvoerder is appointed and the company continues to operate, but under supervision.
In principle this is the survivable one. In practice a substantial share of suspensions convert into bankruptcy, so treat it as a serious warning rather than as good news — and be careful about extending further credit while it runs.
Schuldsanering — debt restructuring
The statutory route for natural persons, including sole traders, under the WSNP. It ends after a fixed period with a clean slate for debts that remain unpaid, which means an unsecured claim can simply cease to be collectable.
What to do with what you find
Two practical points. First, timing matters: payments a company makes shortly before it is declared bankrupt can be challenged and clawed back by the trustee, so being paid is not always the end of the story. Second, an entry stays visible for a period after the case ends, so read the dates and the status rather than the mere presence of a record.
And check the entity, not the name. A group may run several companies with similar names, and only one of them may be in proceedings — which is precisely why the KVK number, rather than the trading name, is the thing to search on.