You typed a contractor's VAT number into the Add contractor form. Instead of jumping to a preview of the company details, you got an error — "VAT number invalid", "VAT lookup failed", or the search just sat there. The contractor card never opened.
You typed a contractor's VAT number into the Add contractor form. Instead of jumping to a preview of the company details, you got an error — "VAT number invalid", "VAT lookup failed", or the search just sat there. The contractor card never opened.
The format is off. Belgian VAT numbers are exactly BE + 10 digits — for example BE0123.456.789 or BE 0123 456 789. If you typed nine digits, or eleven, or accidentally pasted a phone number, Hemma rejects the input before any lookup happens.
The fix: Look at the contractor's invoice or website. The VAT number is on every invoice they send (legally required) and is usually at the top. Re-type it. Hemma is forgiving about spaces, dots, and dashes — BE 0123.456.789 and BE0123456789 and 0123456789 are all the same to it.
The format is right but the checksum is wrong. Belgian VAT numbers have a built-in checksum — the last two digits are derived from the first eight using a modulo-97 rule. If you typed one digit wrong, Hemma's local validator catches it before sending the lookup. The error message is VAT checksum error. Re-read the number on the invoice and re-type it.
Format is fine but the lookup says "not found". The number passed checksum but neither KBO (the Belgian company registry) nor VIES (the EU VAT validity service) returned a match. Three sub-causes:
The lookup spins for a long time then errors. KBO and VIES are external services — they have outages, rate limits, and slow days. The error message is VAT lookup failed. Wait a minute and tap Search again. If it fails twice, fall back to Add manually.
It looked up the right company, but the name does not match the invoice. That is a feature, not an error. Hemma fetched the legal name from KBO (e.g. BVBA Janssens & Co), while your invoice uses the trade name (Janssens Plumbing). The contractor card shows both. The mismatch shows up as a health flag on the contractor row so you know the names diverge — see tracking what's still owed per contractor.
The contractor came back with a "Struck off" status. KBO returned them as inactive. The lookup succeeded, but the contractor is officially out of business. Hemma flags this in the health badges on the contractor list. You can still add them — sometimes contractors keep working under a sole-proprietor name after dissolving the BVBA — but the flag is a heads-up that the legal entity no longer exists.
You typed the BTW number from another EU country. Hemma's input field expects Belgian format. For non-Belgian contractors, switch the form to Add manually and enter the contractor's name and address by hand. You can still record the foreign VAT number in the manual form's VAT field; Hemma stores it but does not validate it.
Hemma is not refusing to add the contractor. The VAT lookup is a convenience to pre-fill the company details — name, address, legal form. If the lookup fails for any reason, Add manually is always available as a tab on the same form. Filling in the contractor by hand has no downside other than typing.
A failed lookup is not a permanent state. If KBO/VIES recovers, you can re-enrich the contractor later from their detail page. The manually-added record will be upgraded with the registry data.
Switch the Add contractor form to the Manually tab. Enter:
Save. The contractor lands on your project the same way as a VAT-lookup-added one. The only thing missing is the KBO/VIES enrichment data — which is information, not capability.
If the same VAT number consistently fails for a contractor you know is in business, email hello@gethemma.app with the VAT number and the contractor's website. We can check what KBO is returning and confirm whether the lookup needs a fix on our side.