All companies are identified in all public and private services by their general Business ID, even if the corporation's name has changed during its history.At the same time, this fulfills the requirement of the Limited Liability Companies Act for the trade register numbers of limited liability companies to be displayed on their invoices and forms.
Use of business IDs in Procountor
The business ID is an identifier, used in Procountor, to reliably identify and differentiate legal persons and corporations. The customer number can also be used as an identifier.
Business IDs are assigned to corporations by the appropriate authority. All authorities (the Finnish Patent and Registration Office, the Finnish Tax Administration and Statistics Finland) use the same ID for the corporation. Business IDs are retrieved from the Joint business information system of the Finnish Patent and Registration Office and the Tax Administration (http://www.ytj.fi).
For companies operating within the EU, the VAT number issued by their country of establishment is used as the identifier. You can check the validity of VAT numbers from the EU’s VAT validation site. The check digits of the VAT numbers of EU Member States are listed here.
If a corporation has no business ID, use its registration number in the register of associations, or another such identifier.
Private persons are identified by their social security numbers if the person is an employee of your company.
If a corporation or person lacks a public identifier of any kind, you can leave this data item empty. Such companies will be differentiated by their customer numbers and names.
Verification of the ID
The check digits of Finnish business IDs are verified when the business partner’s basic information is saved into Procountor. Business IDs can be entered with or without the hyphen. You should consistently use one method or the other.
When a social security number is used as the identifier, the check digits must be correct.
When a free-form identifier is used, leave the ID type empty. The data item itself can also be left empty, or any combination of characters and data (max. 40 characters) can be used.
The VAT numbers or other identifiers of companies operating in the EU are not checked in the registers. On invoices, the contents of the VAT number field are verified according to the following rule: the first two characters must be alphabetical, and must be followed by 5-12 characters.