Checking Suppliers Against the Company Register

AI Finance Team can check your suppliers against the Hungarian company register. It tells you whether the bank account on a supplier invoice is the one the supplier reported to the register, fills in partner details you are missing, and lists anything that differs so you can look at it.

The check is switched on per workspace, and off until we switch it on. If you do not see it, ask your AI Finance Team contact.

The Four Answers

Most partners start in the first state, and a workspace that has just been switched on will be full of it.

• Not checked yet. Nothing has asked the register about this partner. A check runs when a new supplier invoice arrives.
• Registered. The register lists this company, and, where an account was compared, lists that account for its tax number. The line says since when, and when it was checked.
• Not registered. The register does not list this account, or this company, for that tax number. This is not proof of fraud. A bank has eight days to report a newly opened account, so a recent account may be perfectly genuine. Foreign companies with a Hungarian tax number and organisations that are not companies are not listed there either. Check with the supplier, on a number you already know, before paying.
• Cannot be checked. We could not ask, or the register could not answer. The reason is always shown: no tax number, a foreign supplier, a VAT group identifier rather than a company's own number, the partner used for private-person sales, this month's lookups are used up, or the register subscription refused. Cannot be checked is never a negative result.

On a partner with no bank account on file, the section says Found in the register instead: the lookup worked, there was just no account to compare.

Where You See It

• On a supplier invoice, on its Matching & payment tab, under Supplier's account (payee) in the payment instructions.
• On the payment file page, on each candidate line.
• On a verified partner, in the Company register section: the decisions waiting for you, your data and the register's side by side under Compared with the register, what the register filled in, and a folded Company details block with the legal form, registration number, main activity, and the figures from the last filed report.
• In the verify dialog, when you turn a counterparty into a partner: if the register knows the company, its legal name, tax number, registered address and main activity are offered, and Use these details fills them in.

What Starts a Check

• A supplier invoice from a partner nobody has checked yet. Only expense invoices, and only suppliers: a customer is never sent to the register.
• You, with Check now on a partner that has no result yet, or Revalidate afterwards.
• A changed payee account, which always forces a fresh check, because that is exactly the case the control exists for.
• Editing the partner, which re-checks from data we already hold, at no cost.

Invoices that arrived before the check was switched on are not checked. If a client needs their history covered, ask us: we can run a capped backfill that walks the existing suppliers.

What a check costs, and what it does not

Each check uses one of the month's register lookups. Searching the register by name is free, and so is a re-check that only recomputes from data already fetched. Revalidating the same partner twice within an hour is refused.

The register's own data is refreshed at most every 90 days. After that the section marks the answer Out of date and waits for you: age alone never spends a lookup.

Differences, and What to Do With Them

Where your data and the register disagree, nothing changes on its own. The section says how many decisions are waiting, shows each one as a card, and puts both values side by side in the Compared with the register table below. Each card is badged by how much it matters: Check, Review or Info.

1. How many decisions are waiting, above the cards.
2. The badge says how much the difference matters: Check, Review or Info.
3. Two buttons per card. The left one acts; Leave as is changes nothing and is not a rejection.
4. The same difference again in the table, with its own action per row. The amber rows are the ones that differ; the tax number highlights only the digits that changed.

An account you add stays unconfirmed. It is marked "added from the company register" on the partner's bank accounts, and it can only go into a payment file after someone with "Manage approvals" confirms it, the same as any other account. See Paying Approved Invoices.

Leave as is (or Not now on the accounts card) hides a card and marks the row Left as is. It stays that way until the register reports a different value, and then the card comes back on its own. Undo in the row takes it back. Leaving something as it is only changes what this section shows: it does not confirm an account, and it does not change what a payment file allows.

Every take over, add and leave as is appears on the partner's history.

What the Register Fills In

When the register knows something you do not, exactly four things are filled in, and only while they are empty: the address, the country, the full tax number where you already hold its first eight digits, and the VAT group identifier. The register never writes the name or the bank accounts on its own. An account it lists reaches the partner only when a person adds it, as described above. Nothing at all is filled in for a sole trader.

Accounts Confirmed Automatically

Before an account can go into a payment file, someone has to confirm it: see Paying Approved Invoices. The register can do that in one narrow case, the first account ever seen for a supplier, when all of this holds:

• the register lists exactly that account for the supplier's tax number;
• the register's name for the company agrees with the partner's name, either its full name or its short name. A name missing on either side counts as disagreement, never as a match;
• the company is active, and is not a sole trader;
• the register data is less than 90 days old;
• the invoice is an expense invoice that arrived after the check was switched on;
• the account is a 24-digit domestic account number;
• the tax number came from a person, not from a name search.

That last condition is stricter than it sounds: in practice the register confirms an account only for a partner whose tax number someone typed or corrected on the partner page. For everyone else a person still confirms, which is the fraud control working as intended.

A changed account is never confirmed automatically, whatever the register says.

The register's answer never blocks an approval or a payment file. What blocks a payment file is an unconfirmed account, and a register confirmation is one way to unblock it.

Partners Without a Tax Number

A partner with no tax number cannot be checked. Press Find in the company register to search by name, which costs nothing, and Use this tax number on the right result.

A tax number found by name is marked as such. It fills the gap, but it is never used to confirm a bank account automatically, because a name is not proof of identity. If you later type the tax number in yourself, it counts as yours.

Sole Traders and Private Persons

A sole trader's tax number is sent to the register, and the answer is that they are a private person, so no company data comes back and nothing is filled in. The partner used for private-person sales is never sent at all.

Who Can See and Use It

Seeing the register's answers needs "View invoices and bank transactions". Pressing Check now, Revalidate or Use this tax number, and taking over a value, adding an account or leaving a difference as it is, needs "Edit master data". Confirming an account you added needs "Manage approvals". See Roles and Permissions.

Where the Data Goes

Lookups are made at WellData Kft. (cegadatapi.hu), a Hungarian provider in the EU. What is sent is the supplier's tax number, or its name for a name search. What comes back is kept to the company's own registry data: the owners, the managers, phone numbers, email addresses and the website are discarded and never stored. WellData is listed in our sub-processor register.

Related Articles

• Managing Partners
• Paying Approved Invoices