FURS: Slovenia VAT register

The Slovenian Financial Administration publishes its VAT payer lists as downloadable files rather than as a lookup service: one file for legal persons and one for natural persons. Avatcado mirrors both on a schedule and answers Slovenian fallbacks from that snapshot, so no request of yours waits on a file download.

FURS is run by the Financial Administration of the Republic of Slovenia, and its data is published at www.fu.gov.si. It is one of the 10 national registers Avatcado consults on the Pro and Business plans when VIES cannot answer for Slovenia, and it never replaces a VIES answer that does arrive. The national registry fallback guide covers the full precedence order.

What FURS publishes

• A file of VAT registered legal persons carrying the tax number, the registered name, the address and the date VAT registration began
• A separate file of VAT registered natural persons, with the name and address of the person and the same registration date
• A VAT group identifier on the legal persons file, marking companies that account for VAT through a group rather than under their own number
• Both files under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, which is what makes mirroring them a published permission rather than an assumption

How Avatcado uses it

A scheduled job downloads both files, parses them and stores the result as one snapshot, around 134,000 numbers on a recent load. A Slovenian fallback then reads that snapshot in place of calling anything, so the answer costs a database lookup rather than a file download. A number that is present and servable comes back with source furs, its name and its address; anything else falls through to the cache.

FURS publishes a bulk file rather than a per-number service, so Avatcado mirrors it instead of calling it on your request. Snapshot refreshed 06:30 and 18:30 UTC, and each run replaces the stored snapshot. A snapshot is only trusted while it is demonstrably fresh: it has to be less than 3 days old, and the source file itself has to have changed within the last 14 days. A snapshot that fails either gate is not served at all, because a stale file is worse than no fallback.

The rule that matters most is that a register can only ever confirm a registration. A miss, whether FURS says not registered or simply has no record, is never turned into valid: false: the request falls through to the stored result instead. An answer that does come from here carries source: "furs" and source_status: "fallback", and no consultation_number field at all, because only VIES issues those.

What a FURS answer contains

Data quirks worth knowing

• Companies filed under a VAT-group identifier are not served (VIES did not confirm a member's own number)
• The two files have different columns, so a natural person and a company are not described in the same shape even though both can be VAT registered
• The legal persons file lists companies that are not VAT payers as well, so a row existing in the file is not on its own a confirmation
• The snapshot is only served while it passes both freshness gates, so a Slovenian fallback simply stops answering rather than serving figures that have stopped moving

Try it

Validating a Slovenia VAT number takes the same call whichever source answers it. This one uses SI82646716, a real registered number:

curl "https://api.avatcado.com/v1/validate?vat_number=SI82646716" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer avat_live_your_api_key"

import Avatcado from "@avatcado/node";

const avatcado = new Avatcado("avat_live_your_api_key");
const { data, error } = await avatcado.vat.validate({
  vatNumber: "SI82646716",
});

if (data?.meta.source === "furs") {
  // VIES was unavailable; FURS confirmed the registration.
  console.log(data.meta.source_status); // "fallback"
}

On an ordinary day that answer comes from VIES, with source_status: "live". Only when VIES cannot answer for Slovenia does FURS step in, and then meta.source_status reads "fallback" and meta.source reads "furs". The register fallback is included in the Pro and Business plans; the free tier covers 500 validations per month from VIES and the cache. Get an API key or read the API documentation.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading

• Slovenia VAT number format and validation
• Country coverage: what answers every country Avatcado validates
• All 10 national VAT registers
• VIES Down? How the National Registry Fallback Works
• VIES Downtime: Why It Happens and How to Handle It
• VIES API Guide: REST Endpoint, SOAP & Integration