Check the supplier behind an invoice
Drop in the PDF, or paste the text. The VAT numbers, bank accounts and email domains on it are read out here in your browser, you correct anything misread, and then every check runs at once.
The invoice is read in your browser. The file is not uploaded, not stored, and never leaves your device — only the identifiers you confirm are sent, exactly as if you had typed them in.
The invoice
Select the text in your PDF viewer or email and paste it here. Works just as well as the file.
Check what was read, then run it
Everything below came off the invoice and may be wrong — a company name in particular is a guess. Correct anything that is off, untick anything you do not want checked, then run it.
Checked here, before you submit
Two things can be answered without contacting anyone, so they are answered as you type. Neither involves a registry, and neither leaves this page.
Fill in an IBAN above and this will check its checksum.
Neither of these asks a registry anything. The checksum is arithmetic and the country comparison is a reading of the two fields above; whether the VAT number is actually registered, and to whom, is what submitting the form answers.
What gets read off the invoice
- VAT numbers, validated against the format and check digit for their country before being offered. The supplier’s and the customer’s are told apart by the labels around them, which is a guess you can correct.
- IBANs, verified with the same checksum the result page uses. A second account is read as readily as the first.
- Email addresses, and the domains they are sent from.
- The company name, taken from the largest text at the top of the page. This is the weakest guess on the page and the one most worth correcting — sanctions screening and the company register both match on it.
What is then checked
Exactly what the home page checks, with nothing added and nothing skipped: VAT registration against VIES and the national registers, IBAN structure and checksum, sanctions screening against the EU, UK and US lists, the sending domain’s email authentication, and the company register where one can be searched.
What this cannot tell you
- Whether the invoice is genuine. Every check here can pass on an invoice that was altered in transit — the usual fraud is a real supplier whose mailbox was compromised, where the only wrong detail is the bank account.
- Whether the bank account belongs to the supplier. No public source anywhere in the EU maps an account to its holder. The checksum proves the number is well formed, nothing more.
- A GB VAT number’s registration. That needs an approved HMRC application this deployment does not hold, so a British number gets its check digit tested and a link to the official checker — never a claim that it is registered.
- Anything about a scanned invoice. There is no text to read, and guessing at pixels would put a misread VAT number in front of someone about to pay.
The example invoice
The example is a made-up invoice carrying the real, published details of a public body — its VAT number, its registered name and its own domain — so that running it returns a genuine answer from a live registry rather than an invented failure. Nothing about it is confidential; all of it is already public.
Questions
Is my invoice uploaded anywhere?
No. The PDF is opened and read inside your browser, and the file is never sent to this server or anywhere else. Only the identifiers you confirm are submitted — the same ones you would have typed in by hand. There is no account and nothing to sign up for.
Why does my scanned invoice not work?
A scan is a picture of an invoice, not text, so there is nothing to read out of it. This tool does not attempt optical character recognition, deliberately: OCR misreads digits, and a misread VAT number or IBAN is worse than no answer at all. Paste or type the details instead and every check still runs.
It picked the wrong company name.
Very likely, and it is meant to be corrected. The name is guessed from the largest text near the top of the page, which on a great many invoices is the word "Invoice". Both the sanctions screen and the company register match on the name, so it is worth getting right before running the check.
It found my own VAT number as well as the supplier’s.
That is expected — a cross-border invoice carries both. The one labelled as the supplier is put first and the customer’s is offered below it, because the labels this reads are often missing or on the far side of a column. Untick anything you do not want checked.
Can it read XML e-invoices?
Not yet. Factur-X, ZUGFeRD, UBL and Peppol carry the same identifiers in a structured form that is easier to read than a PDF, and they are on the list. For now, a Factur-X file is also a valid PDF, so dropping one in reads its visible text.
Does it check every account on the invoice?
Yes, up to six. The checksum is arithmetic done in your browser and costs nothing, so there is no reason to check only the first. VAT numbers and sending domains are capped lower, at two and three, because each one is a live lookup against a service this site does not own.