Look Up Official Company Data

Get Official Data looks a Belgian customer or vendor up in the EU VAT register (VIES) and offers its registered name and address for you to confirm, one field at a time. Nothing is written without you selecting it. Use it when a party's details were typed by hand and you want them to match what the register holds, which is what a bank compares against when your customer pays.

The feature is switched off until you turn it on, because it contacts a host outside the e-invoice platform.

Standard Business Central already offers VIES validation of its own, the EU VAT Reg. No. Validation Service on the Service Connections page, which validates a VAT number and keeps a VAT Registration Log. This lookup is a different thing: it resolves a Belgian party by enterprise number and presents the registered name and address for you to accept field by field. Use whichever fits — they do not conflict.

Prerequisites

Look Up Official Data (VIES) switched on. Choose the Search icon, enter E-Invoice Platform Setup, choose the related link, and switch it on under Official Data Lookup. This contacts ec.europa.eu, so that host must be reachable.
The party needs either a Peppol Endpoint or a VAT Registration No. The register is queried by enterprise number, which is derived from one of those two.

If the setting is off, the action tells you so:

VIES lookups are switched off. Turn on "Look Up Official Data (VIES)" on the E-Invoice Platform Setup page first.

Look up a customer or vendor

Open the Customer Card or Vendor Card.
Choose the Get Official Data action.
On the Official Data page, review each row: the field, the value you currently hold, the official value, and whether they differ.
Select Apply on the rows you want to take over, or choose Select All Differences to select every row where the two disagree. Clear Selection clears them again.
Confirm.

The fields offered are Name, Address, Post Code, City, Country/Region Code and VAT Registration No.

You are told how many fields were updated. If Business Central refused any of them — a validation rule on the field, for example — those are listed separately with the reason, rather than failing silently.

What the register does and does not give you

Belgian parties only. The lookup resolves the party to a country first and stops if it is not Belgium:

Official lookup is only available for Belgian parties. This one resolves to country code.

No bank account number, ever. This is worth saying plainly because it is the field people most want:

No bank account number is offered: no public register links an IBAN to a company. It has to come from the supplier itself, or from an incoming e-invoice.

For supplier bank details, the route is an incoming invoice and a deliberate approval step. See Approve Supplier Bank Details.

Sometimes the register confirms a number without returning details. A VAT number can be valid while the register returns no name or address to copy — some member states withhold them. You are told, and nothing changes.

An invalid number changes nothing. If VIES reports the number is not valid, you get a message saying so and no field is touched.

Nothing to look up by

If the party has neither a Peppol endpoint nor a VAT registration number, there is nothing to derive the enterprise number from:

There is nothing to look this party up by yet. Fill in either the Peppol Endpoint — use Find in Peppol Directory to search by name — or the VAT Registration No. The official register is queried by enterprise number, which is derived from one of those two.

Use Find in Peppol Directory on the card to search by name and fill in the endpoint, then run the lookup.

What happens next

The values you apply are written to the standard Name, Address, Post Code, City, Country/Region Code and VAT Registration No. fields on the customer or vendor.