Reading a Crossroads Bank for Enterprises extract

The enterprise number has ten digits and begins with 0 or 1: 0123.456.789. It identifies the legal entity and never changes, even when the name or the address does.

Numbers beginning with 2 are establishment units: the places where the activity is carried on. A company may have several of them, or none at all if it has no separate premises.

The VAT number repeats the enterprise number prefixed with "BE", but only where the entity is registered for VAT. A company that is not VAT-registered has an enterprise number and no valid VAT number.

The legal form distinguishes, in particular, the sole trader — a self-employed person trading in their own name — from a company. The distinction matters: for a sole trader, the business and the person are the same legal entity, and the register data is personal data.

The status says whether the entity is active or ceased. It is the most-read piece of information, and the simplest.

The legal situation is a separate field, often confused with the previous one: this is where the opening of a bankruptcy, a stay granted under a judicial reorganisation, or the closure of a proceeding appears. "Closure of bankruptcy" means the proceeding is over, not that it is under way.

Activities are entered as NACE-BEL codes. Construction is section F: division 41 for buildings, 42 for civil engineering, 43 for specialised works — electrical, plumbing, roofing, plastering.

A classic trap: the same code may appear in its 2003, 2008 and 2025 versions for one and the same company. Those are three successive encodings of one activity, not three activities.

Activities are declared by the company itself. They say what it says it does; they do not say what it knows how to do.

The start date is the date of registration with the KBO/BCE. It gives the administrative age of the entity — useful, as long as it is not mistaken for the experience of the people who work there: a six-month-old company may have been set up by someone self-employed for twenty years.

The address is the registered seat, which may be a private home or an accountant's address. It is not necessarily where the activity happens.

What the extract does not contain: no turnover, no headcount, no insurance, no disputes, no customer reviews. Those are found elsewhere — the annual accounts at the National Bank's Central Balance Sheet Office, the insurance from the company itself.