Checking a customer's EU VAT number against VIES (VAT Information Exchange System), the European Commission's official real-time registry, before treating a sale as VAT-exempt or reverse-charged.
VIES is the EU's own lookup service for confirming whether a VAT number is currently valid and registered. It matters for cross-border B2B sales inside the EU: reverse-charge and OSS VAT treatment are only appropriate for a customer with a genuinely valid, currently-registered VAT number — using an invalid or fabricated number to zero-rate a sale is a real compliance risk, not a formality.
ClairFlo automatically checks the VIES registry when it detects a B2B order flagged as EU, and flags invalid or suspicious numbers for review rather than silently zero-rating the sale. The resulting reverse-charge/OSS treatment is surfaced for review rather than auto-applied to the ledger, and remains subject to Tax/Legal sign-off before being relied on for filings.