Looking up a company in the KBO/CBE register

The Crossroads Bank for Enterprises is the central company register kept by FPS Economy. Registration in it is what makes a business a business in the administrative sense: the enterprise number it assigns is the company's identity on every invoice, every contract and every other register.

The entry is public by design. Anyone may consult a company's name, legal form, address, status, start date and registered activities, without an account and without the company being told.

One company can have several establishment units — a workshop here, an office there — each with its own unit number under the same enterprise number. The enterprise number is the one that identifies the company itself.

With the number: it is on the quote, the invoice, the email footer or the website, ten digits starting with 0 or 1. Enter it in the form above in any of its printed forms, dots or no dots, with or without the BE prefix.

Without the number: type the name, three characters or more, and pick the right company from the matches. Company names repeat — there is more than one firm called "Renova" — so the commune shown next to each match is what tells them apart.

The lookup here reads the same public register and adds what the other registers say beside it: VAT status from VIES, and any insolvency procedure recorded against the number, each line with its source and its date.

The identity: legal name, legal form (BV/SRL, NV/SA, sole trader…), registered address and commune, and the date the company was started.

The status: active, stopped, or marked by an insolvency event such as an opened bankruptcy. A "stopped" entry is a company that has ceased to exist administratively — a quote signed with one is a quote signed with nobody.

The activities: what the company is registered to do, as NACE codes. A roofing job quoted by a company registered only for landscaping is not illegal, but it is a question worth asking before signing.

Nothing about quality, price, or reliability. The KBO/CBE records administrative facts; it has never rated anyone and never will. A clean entry is a floor, not a recommendation.

Nothing about debts or solvency either. Financial health is read elsewhere — in the annual accounts filed with the National Bank, and in the insolvency registers — and a company can be registered, active and insolvent in the same week.

One honest caveat about lookups here: most Belgian construction firms are sole traders, whose register entry is personal data. Domara currently answers name searches for them with an explanation rather than a listing; the official KBO Public Search, linked below, remains available for any entry.