A name and an address are easy to type. This checks whether a business is really behind them.
Company Details Lookup searches millions of US businesses in both directions. Give it a legal name and it returns where that company is and how to contact it. Give it an address and it returns every business registered there — including none at all, which is its own kind of answer.
Runs in the same submission as IRS TIN matching. Portal and API.
Three unrelated businesses share this address. Ordinary for an office park. Worth a question if your vendor described a private warehouse.
Part of every TIN Comply plan from $20/mo — not a separate purchase. See pricing
TIN matching proves the number. This proves there's a business.
An IRS TIN match confirms that a TIN and a legal name agree in IRS records. It is silent on everything that happens next: whether the company still operates, whether it's where it says it is, and how you reach a human when you need a corrected W-9. Those questions arrive at exactly the moment a payment is about to go out.
An address with nobody behind it
A vendor record can carry a perfectly formatted, USPS-deliverable address that no business has ever operated from. Deliverable and real are not the same test.
No way to reach the payee
Chasing a corrected W-9 stalls when the only contact you hold is the email address that stopped replying. A phone number and a website turn a dead end into a call.
Remittance change requests
"We've moved — please update our address." Confirming a business is actually registered at the new location is a cheap check against a very expensive kind of fraud.
A name that's close, but not the one
Common trade names repeat across dozens of unrelated companies. Seeing them side by side with their addresses is usually enough to tell which one you're paying.
One tool, pointed whichever way you have data
Most vendor records give you a name or an address, rarely both cleanly. The lookup works from either, and if you supply both it runs both.
Look up a company by name
Verify a business by its legal name to confirm you're dealing with a real, identifiable company — and to pick up the contact details your vendor record is missing. Useful against both fraud and plain misrepresentation, and it helps keep vendor master data accurate enough to stand up to an audit.
- Required: legal name
- Returns: address, website, phone, email, and map location
A common name returns many matches across many addresses. That isn't noise — it's how you find the right entity, by matching the address you already hold against the list.
Look up a company by address
Searching by address is how you catch entities using fake or non-existent locations. Addresses are checked against USPS guidelines first, so a malformed or unrecognized address is flagged for your review rather than quietly returning nothing and looking like a clean negative.
- Required: address
- Returns: company name, website, phone, email, and map location
You get every business at that address, each with a match confidence score — which means the shape of the result set tells you something before you've read a single field.
Available fields vary by company. A match can include any of the above, but not every business publishes an email or a website, and smaller ones often publish neither. Registered name and address are the fields most consistently present.
Three steps, seconds each
Enter what you have
A legal name, an address, or both. You don't choose a lookup type — the platform runs every validation your data supports and reports the rest as skipped, so partial vendor records still get you everything they can.
We search the company database
Millions of US businesses, searched by name and by address. On the address side the input is standardized to USPS guidelines first, so a formatting difference doesn't get mistaken for a business that isn't there.
Read the matches
Each match comes back with its registered name, contact details, and a confidence score. Results land on the same screen as your TIN match, sanctions screening, and address validation, and go into the audit trail with them.
How many businesses come back matters as much as which ones
An address lookup returns everything registered at that location. Four outcomes, four different follow-ups — and the last one is the one worth building a habit around.
One clean match
The business you expected, at the address you hold, with contact details attached. Nothing to chase. Copy the phone number into the vendor record while you're there.
Several unrelated businesses
Completely normal for an office park, a coworking space, a shared professional building, or a registered agent's address. It becomes a question only when it contradicts what the vendor told you about their operation.
No business at all
Nothing registered there. Often innocent — a sole proprietor working from home, a very new company, or one that trades somewhere other than where it registered. It's also what an invented address looks like, so it's a reason to ask, not a verdict.
Businesses there — but not yours
The address is real and occupied, and your payee isn't among the occupants. This is the sharpest of the four signals, because the innocent explanations that cover an empty result don't cover this one nearly as well.
Six moments when "does this company exist?" stops being theoretical
Vendor onboarding
A new payee submits a W-9 with a name and an address. Confirming a business is registered at that address takes seconds and happens before the record ever reaches your payment run.
Remittance and address changes
Change requests are a well-worn fraud route precisely because they arrive by email and look routine. Checking the new address against the business register is the cheapest control you have.
Chasing a corrected W-9
After a TIN mismatch you need a person, not an inbox. A published phone number and website turn unanswered emails into a call that actually closes the correction.
Cleaning up vendor master data
Old vendor files accumulate stale addresses and missing contacts. Running names through the lookup fills gaps and surfaces the records that no longer point at anything.
Shell and pass-through entities
Shell companies have to put something in the address field. An address with no registered business, or one where your payee isn't among the occupants, is where that starts to show.
Showing the check was done
Results are timestamped and stored with the rest of the validation record, so "we verified the vendor before paying" is something you can produce rather than assert.
Four validations that all touch a name or an address
These get confused with each other constantly, which matters because passing one of them tells you nothing about the others. They all run from the same submission.
| Validation | Question it answers | You give it | You get back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company Details Lookup | Is there a real business here, and how do I reach it? | Legal name or address | Businesses found, with contact details |
| EIN & Company Lookup | Which legal entity is behind this EIN? | EIN or legal name | The matching legal name or EIN |
| Address Validation | Is this address real and mailable? | Address | USPS-standardized address, ZIP+4 |
| IRS TIN Matching | Do this TIN and name agree in IRS records? | TIN and legal name | Match or mismatch, with a reason code |
The useful pairing is address validation plus company lookup. The first tells you the address exists and mail will arrive. The second tells you whether a business is there to receive it. An address can pass the first test cleanly and fail the second completely.
Common questions about company lookup
How is this different from EIN & Company Lookup?
They answer different questions. EIN and Company Lookup resolves identity between a legal name and an EIN — it tells you which registered entity a tax number belongs to. Company Details Lookup tells you where a business is and how to reach it, and it searches by address as well as by name.
In practice you use EIN lookup to work out who a payee legally is, and company details lookup to confirm the business exists where it says it does and to find a phone number.
What comes back from a lookup by address?
Every business registered at that address — not just the one you were expecting — each with a match confidence score. A result can include the company name, phone, website, email, and map location.
The count matters too. One clean match, several unrelated businesses sharing a building, and no business at all are three genuinely different answers that call for different follow-up.
What does it mean when nothing is found at an address?
That no business is registered there. There are innocent explanations — a sole proprietor working from a residential address, a very new business, or a company trading from somewhere other than where it registered.
It is also exactly what a fabricated address looks like. Treat it as a reason to ask a question before releasing a payment, not as a conclusion on its own.
Will I always get a phone number, website, and email?
No. Available fields vary by company. A match can include address, website, phone, email, and map location, but not every business publishes all of them and smaller businesses often publish fewer. Registered name and address are the most consistently present.
Does this replace address validation?
No — they're complementary, and running both is the point. Address validation confirms an address is real and mailable against USPS records, standardizes it, and returns ZIP+4. Company details lookup tells you which businesses are registered there.
An address can be perfectly valid and reliably deliverable and still have no business behind it. That combination is worth knowing about.
Do I have to run this separately?
No. A single submission runs every validation your data supports. Supply a legal name and an address and company details lookup returns alongside address validation, IRS TIN matching, sanctions screening, and the rest — one call, one screen, one audit record.
Validations you didn't supply data for are listed as skipped with the reason, so it's always clear what ran and what didn't.
The rest of the vendor validation stack
Find out who's actually at that address
Confirm the business exists, pick up the phone number your vendor record is missing, and log the whole thing — in the same call that runs your TIN match.
Included in every plan. No separate purchase.