New Zealand

How to use Kausate in New Zealand — what you can call, which identifiers it uses, and which documents you can order

New to the API? Start with the jurisdictions overview, which explains how ordering, identifiers and documents work everywhere.

Operations

6 callable

Documents

3 orderable

Your own registry account

Not needed

Company data here comes directly from New Zealand Business Number Register.

What you can call here

What each operation does is the same everywhere and is explained on the jurisdictions overview.

Operation	Status
Autocomplete	Live
Company search	Live
Company report Includes: Registered details, Legal representatives and Shareholders.	Live
Shareholder graph	Live
List documents	Live
Retrieve a document	Live

Field	What it does
`name`	Entity name to search for. Matches registered names, trading names and previous names across every New Zealand register.
`nzbn`	Exact New Zealand Business Number — 13 digits. Accepted with or without spaces; the GS1 check digit is validated before the register is called.

Search by passing the registration number as companyNumber — it is matched against the schemes this register can search on, so you do not name the scheme yourself. Not every scheme below is searchable; the rest label the values returned in a company’s identifiers.

Identifier	Appears as	Format
New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) New Zealand Business Number - a 13-digit GS1 Global Location Number in the GS1 New Zealand (94) prefix, closed by a mod-10 check digit. One per entity across every New Zealand register (companies, sole traders, partnerships, trusts, societies, government), globally unique in the GLN namespace. All 500 sampled NZBNs begin 9429; the pattern stays at the 94 prefix so a future GS1 NZ allocation is not rejected. MBIE's NZBN API rejects a bad check digit with HTTP 400 before performing any lookup.	`nz_nzbn`	`^94\d{11}$`
New Zealand GST Number New Zealand GST registration number, which is the entity's IRD number - 8 or 9 digits. Published on the NZBN register only where the entity has opted to make it public, so it is absent far more often than not.	`nz_gst_number`	`^\d{8,9}$`
Companies Office Company Number	`nz_companies_office_company_number`	No fixed format

Identifier notes

New Zealand issues a single identifier — the NZBN — across all ten of the country's business registers (companies, overseas companies, limited partnerships, incorporated societies, charitable trusts, building societies, credit unions, friendly societies, industrial & provident societies, plus self-registered sole traders, partnerships and trading trusts). A sole trader and a large public company are identified the same way. Companies also carry a separate Companies Office company number, but it only exists for entities on the companies register, is not unique across the other nine registers, and cannot be used on its own to look a company up — always address a New Zealand entity by its NZBN.

Documents you can order

Document	Order by	Status
New Zealand Constitution The company's constitution as filed with the New Zealand Companies Office, taken from the most recent filing in the constitution family (adoption, amendment, revocation-and-adoption, or an alteration of articles), so an amended constitution supersedes the original. Ordered without a document id. A New Zealand company that adopts no constitution is governed by the Companies Act 1993's default rules and has none on file — measured at 26% of a 300-company sample holding one, so a not-found answer here is a fact about the company rather than a gap in coverage.	`articles_of_association`	Live
New Zealand Companies Office Filing A single document from a New Zealand company's filing history as held by the Companies Office — constitutions, annual returns, director and shareholder particulars and consents, financial statements, prospectuses, amalgamation and insolvency papers — delivered as the file the register scanned. Ordered with a kausateDocumentId from the document list.	A document ID from the list operation	Live
New Zealand Register Extract Current-state extract for a New Zealand entity, generated by Kausate from the live NZBN register record: a structured view of status, legal form, addresses, role holders, share allocations, the ultimate holding company and former names, followed by the register's own JSON response and its SHA-256 fingerprint. The Companies Office issues no extract document of its own — the whole register is free to read — so this is a Kausate-generated summary rather than a registry-issued certificate. Available for every entity type, including the ones that keep no filing history.	`register_extract`	Live

Documents with a shortcut are ordered directly by that name — for example articles_of_association. The rest are filings whose availability differs per company: call list documents first and order the ID it returns.

Local notes

Gotchas

Trap	What happens
Insolvency list can be empty	The insolvency-proceedings list can be empty while status reads "In Receivership & In Liquidation" or "In Statutory Management" — check status, not the list, or you'll misclassify insolvent companies as healthy.
Some entities have no registered office	Sole traders, partnerships, trading trusts and public-sector entities have no registered-office address — only a business address. Reading just the registered-address type shows them as having none on file.
Joint parcels report in full	A jointly held parcel reports at full size per co-holder, not split — two holders of 1,000 shares each show 1,000 shares and the same percentage, noting the other holder. Naive summing overcounts.
Extensively held returns partials	For companies the register marks as extensively held, only the largest parcels return — one cooperative shows 10 allocations against roughly 1.6 billion issued shares, each flagged as partial.
Holding company absent from graph	The declared ultimate holding company appears on the company report as a controlling party with no ownership percentage, but is absent from the shareholder graph since percentage-based chains can't represent it. It's a distinct statutory declaration from direct shareholders — not necessarily the same entity.
Limited partners are excluded	Limited partnerships publish only general partners; limited partners are excluded from the public record by law, so the officer/role list is accurate but not a complete partner list.
Officer data is opt-in	Officer and role information for sole traders, partnerships and trusts is opt-in, so many have sparse or empty role lists — normal, not a gap.
Officers carry residential addresses	Director and officer records include the individual's residential address; insolvency appointee records (liquidator, receiver, administrator) include full name, firm, email, phone, and street address. Design storage and display accordingly.
Most have no constitution	Only about a quarter of companies have a constitution on file — the rest default to the Companies Act's rules. A constitution request failing is usually accurate, not a missing document.
Accounts filing is rare	Public accounts filing is required only from a specific regulated category of company, not ordinary companies — expect most companies to have no accounts filing at all.

Glossary

Term	Meaning
`In Statutory Management`	A New Zealand company status meaning a Crown-appointed manager, not the board, currently runs the company under statutory management law.
`Person Authorised for Service`	The role on an overseas company's New Zealand record held by whoever is authorised to accept legal documents on its behalf inside New Zealand — the local equivalent of a registered agent for a foreign company.

What you can call here

How to search

Fields

Examples

Company identifiers