Do these checks cost anything?

No. The public search of the KBO/BCE, VIES and the insolvency search are free and open to everyone, with no account needed.

Is a company with no adverse signal a safe one?

No. It means the registers consulted said nothing adverse on the dates shown. That is useful information; it is not a guarantee about the quality of a job.

Do I have to withhold part of the payment if the company has social security or tax debts?

The withholding obligation under article 30bis does not apply to a private individual having work carried out for purely private purposes. The checking tool remains public and open to anyone.

← All guides

Checking a contractor before you sign

Before a sizeable quote, four public registers answer the question "does this company really exist, and in what form?" in a matter of minutes. None of them tells you whether the work will be done well. All of them tell you something useful when the answer is missing.

Updated on 12 Aug 2026

Ask for the enterprise number first

Every company active in Belgium has a ten-digit enterprise number, in the form 0123.456.789. It appears on the quote, on the invoice and on the company's website — that is a legal obligation, not a courtesy.

A professional who will not give you that number is withholding the one key that opens every public register. That in itself is information.

Beware of a common confusion: the Belgian VAT number, the same number prefixed with "BE", only exists if the company is registered for VAT. A company can be active and perfectly in order without being VAT-registered.

Check that the company exists and is active

The Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (KBO/BCE) is the official register of Belgian companies. Its public search returns, for an enterprise number: the name, the legal form, the start date, the status (active or ceased), the registered seat, the establishment units and the declared activities.

The status is the first thing to read. A "ceased" company still sending out quotes is not necessarily a fraud — a cessation may be recent, or the activity may have been taken over by another structure — but it is a question to ask before paying a deposit.

Compare the name with the one on the quote as well. A trading name that differs from the legal name is common and legitimate; two different entities behind one job is not.

Check the VAT number against VIES

VIES is the European Commission service that confirms, for a VAT number, whether it is valid today in the country that issued it. The answer is binary and dated: valid, or not valid.

An invalid number has several possible causes — a typing error, a company that is not VAT-registered, a registration that has been struck off — and none of them can be guessed from the answer. What the answer does say is that an explanation is worth asking for before you pay an invoice that charges VAT.

VIES sometimes replies "service unavailable". That is not an adverse answer: it is the absence of an answer, and it should be read as such rather than turned into a conclusion.

Look for an insolvency proceeding

Bankruptcies and judicial reorganisations are published court decisions: they appear in the Belgian Official Gazette, in the Central Solvency Register (RegSol) and, as a legal situation, in the KBO/BCE data.

An open proceeding does not mean the company has stopped working — a judicial reorganisation exists precisely so that it can carry on. What it does change is what a deposit represents: in a bankruptcy, a private customer is an ordinary creditor, and a deposit paid before the judgment is rarely recovered.

A closed proceeding, on the other hand, is over. Reading it as a current warning would be wrong, and that is the mistake made by lists copied around without a date.

Look at the declared activity, and know what it does not prove

The KBO/BCE lists a company's declared activities as NACE codes: roofing, electrical work, plastering, structural work. A company with no declared activity matching the job on offer deserves a question.

But a NACE code is a declaration, not an examination. Nobody checks competence at the moment it is entered, and access to the profession differs by Region: Flanders abolished the professional-competence requirement in 2018, while Brussels and Wallonia keep it for several construction trades.

Voluntary certificates — VCA for safety, recognition (agréation) for public contracts — answer different questions again, and each has its own guide here.

Questions people ask

Do these checks cost anything?: No. The public search of the KBO/BCE, VIES and the insolvency search are free and open to everyone, with no account needed.
Is a company with no adverse signal a safe one?: No. It means the registers consulted said nothing adverse on the dates shown. That is useful information; it is not a guarantee about the quality of a job.
Do I have to withhold part of the payment if the company has social security or tax debts?: The withholding obligation under article 30bis does not apply to a private individual having work carried out for purely private purposes. The checking tool remains public and open to anyone.

Sources

Every statement in this guide comes from one of these sources. They are public and free to consult.

A register says what it says on a given date. The absence of an adverse signal is not a guarantee about work still to come, and Domara does not rate or rank any company.