I’ve been working on FastBusinessAPI, and I recently added a free tool that lets people check an Australian Business Number and start building a structured business profile from it.
The idea is pretty simple:
A lot of Australian business checks still start with one thing: an ABN.
But the workflow around that can still be manual. Someone might check ABN Lookup, copy details into a spreadsheet, confirm GST status, check the entity name, look for registered business names, and then save that information somewhere else.
I wanted to make that process cleaner.
So I built a free ABN checker here:
https://fastbusinessapi.com/free-abn-checker/
What the tool does
You enter an Australian Business Number, and it returns key business details such as:
ABN status
GST status
entity type
registered business names
main business location
ASIC registration details, where available
last updated / record extraction details
The bigger goal is not just “check an ABN.”
The goal is to turn an ABN into a more useful Australian business profile that could help with supplier checks, onboarding, internal records, lead research, and business data workflows.
Why I built it
While building FastBusinessAPI, I started looking more closely at how Australian businesses check suppliers, subcontractors, and company details.
A common pattern kept coming up:
Someone sends through an ABN, and the person on the other side manually checks whether the details look correct.
That might include checking:
Is the ABN active?
Is the business registered for GST?
Does the name match the supplier details?
Is it a company, sole trader, trust, partnership, or something else?
Are there registered business names attached?
Does anything look inconsistent?
For one supplier, that is not too painful.
But if you are doing this repeatedly, it becomes a boring manual admin task.
That is where I think structured business profiles can help.
The profile generation idea
The current free checker focuses on ABN-based details.
But the direction I’m building toward is:
Enter an ABN → generate a structured Australian business profile.
A generated profile could include:
core ABN details
GST status
entity type
registered names
business location
company identifiers
website, where available
LinkedIn or social links, where available
industry/category
short business description
confidence signals
source links
warnings or missing-data notes
The end result would be something much easier to save, review, or use through an API.
Why this could be useful for developers
From a developer point of view, I think there are a few possible use cases.
Supplier onboarding
If your app helps businesses onboard suppliers, contractors, vendors, or service providers, ABN-based profile generation could reduce the amount of manual data entry.
Instead of asking users to fill in everything, you could start with the ABN and pre-fill verified business details.
Internal business tools
A lot of small internal admin tools need basic business data.
Rather than storing only a supplier name and ABN, teams could store a fuller business profile with status, GST registration, entity type, and source data.
CRM and lead enrichment
For Australian B2B workflows, an ABN can be a useful starting point for building a cleaner business record.
This could help with lead qualification, business research, and account records.
Compliance-style checks
This is not meant to replace legal, financial, or compliance advice.
But for basic business verification, having structured ABN and GST information in one place could make checks easier and more consistent.
What I’m trying to figure out
The technical part is only one side of it.
The bigger question is whether this solves a real enough workflow problem.
I’m currently trying to learn:
who checks ABNs most often
whether GST status matters in real supplier workflows
whether people want this as a free tool, dashboard, API, or all three
what extra data would make a business profile genuinely useful
how much trust/source transparency people expect
whether profile generation from an ABN feels useful or unnecessary
That last point matters because I do not want to build a flashy data product that nobody actually needs.
Current status
Right now, the free ABN checker is live.
The broader FastBusinessAPI product is still being developed around ABN-based Australian business profiles, saved profiles, usage tracking, and API access.
It is still early, but the direction is becoming clearer:
ABN lookup is the starting point. Structured business profiles are the actual product.
Feedback welcome
I’d really appreciate feedback from other developers, founders, or anyone who has worked with Australian business data.
Main things I’m interested in:
Does this feel like a real workflow problem?
What fields would you expect in a useful business profile?
Would you rather use this as an API or a dashboard?
What would make you trust the generated profile?
Are there any obvious use cases I’m missing?
Free tool:
https://fastbusinessapi.com/free-abn-checker/
Thanks for reading.
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