KVKBase Team

Monitor Debtor Risk with KvK Changes

Which changes in the Dutch business register point to debtor risk, what to do about them, and how to have a list of customers watched automatically.

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You assess a customer once: when you create the account. After that you deliver on credit for months or years, while the company behind that customer keeps changing. It moves, gets a new director, converts into a BV, or enters suspension of payments. Those changes sit in public registers, but nobody looks at them until an invoice is overdue.

In this article we go through which changes matter for debtor risk, what you can do with them, and how to set it up so it does not become extra work.

What a change does and does not tell you

First a sober caveat. A change in the business register is not a payment arrear and not a credit score. A company that moves is usually just a company that moves. The value is in the combination: a signal from the register next to what you already know about payment behaviour.

That is why monitoring complements credit insurance or a credit report instead of replacing it. It fills the gap between the assessment at the start and the moment it goes wrong.

Signals you want to see

Bankruptcy or suspension of payments. The clearest signal. In suspension the company continues under supervision; in bankruptcy your claim depends on the trustee. In both cases you want to stop delivering on credit straight away and file your claim in time.

Deregistration or dissolution. If the legal entity is dissolved, an open invoice sits with a party that no longer exists. The sooner you know, the better the chance there is still something to recover. How to check this by hand is covered in how to check if a company is dissolved.

New director. An abrupt change of directors can be a restructuring or a business being wound down. Note that we only follow directors when the source provides them for that company. If they are missing you get no alert about it, which is deliberate: no signal is better than a wrong signal.

New address or name. Usually harmless, but it affects your invoicing. If your invoice goes to an old address, your payment term quietly runs on. An alert lets you update the master data before that happens.

Different legal form. From sole proprietorship to BV is good news for most people. The other way around, or a forced change, is a reason for a conversation. The background is in legal forms in the Dutch register.

A change in activities (SBI). A company that suddenly does something very different is a different risk than the one you accepted.

A VAT number that turns invalid. If a number that was valid at VIES is now invalid, something is wrong. We only follow this when a VAT number is known.

What is expected of you per signal

An alert without follow-up is noise. Agree beforehand what happens:

  • Bankruptcy or suspension: hold orders, set the credit limit to zero, file the claim, inform the team.
  • Deregistration: check open invoices, investigate recovery, block the customer.
  • Address or name: update master data and invoice address, get in touch if in doubt.
  • Director or legal form: a call at the next order or a review of the limit.

Write that down in a short work instruction. With three fixed actions per type of alert, there is no discussion about who does what.

How to set it up

  1. Decide who goes on the list. Not all customers: the ones you extend credit to. A customer who pays upfront needs no watching.
  2. Add them by KvK number. If you do not have the numbers at hand, find them with the search endpoint in the API. Existing customer files go in as a bulk add from a list or CSV.
  3. Use your debtor number as the label. Then an alert links straight back to your accounting.
  4. Choose how you receive it. A daily digest for a finance team, or a signed webhook if you want a task or ticket created automatically.
  5. Add new customers automatically. Through the API you put a customer on the list the moment you create it.

What to expect from the timing

The check runs once a day, not in real time. An event that is in the source today reaches you at the next check at the latest. The source itself can lag: a bankruptcy does not always appear on the day of the ruling. Anyone who finds a customer worrying should therefore look beyond the alert, at their own reminders and phone calls.

The first check of a company only records the starting position and sends no alert. Do not expect an alert for something that happened before you added the company. Check existing customers by hand once when you set this up.

What it costs

Monitoring is part of the paid plans as watch slots: Starter 10 companies, Pro 100 and Business 1,000. The free plan has no monitoring. A check costs no tokens, so a growing list does not eat your lookups. The details are on the pricing page.

Honest about the limits

Register data says nothing about payment behaviour, the annual accounts or what a company has agreed with its creditors. A quiet watchlist therefore does not mean a customer is healthy, only that nothing changed in the public data. Treat it as an extra pair of eyes, not as your only check.

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