> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.otbstudio.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Reading the data correctly

> How to read Belgian company data correctly: unlabelled codes, closing dates, FTE employees, deleted companies, addresses, current mandates, corrected filings and ownership dates.

These are stated here and in the MCP tool descriptions, because an agent needs them as much as a developer does.

> **1. statusCode and juridicalFormCode are raw codes with no labels**
>
> Labels are not provided yet. Show the code, or map it against the KBO reference lists.

> **2. closingDate is not a calendar year**
>
> The figures come from one filing, and the closing date is the last day of the period it covers, often not 31 December. The record has no period start date, so do not describe the figures as covering a given year. Quote the closing date beside the number.

> **3. employees is average full-time equivalents, not a headcount**
>
> It is fractional: 19.7 is a real value. Rounding it to 19 invents precision the source does not have.

> **4. A deleted company is returned, not hidden**
>
> `deleted: true` means the entity is flagged as removed in the source register and its details are historical. Search leaves these out. A lookup by number does not.

> **5. Address completeness varies**
>
> Many companies have no street address on file. The postal code is almost always present. Treat the street address as present or absent, not as guaranteed.

> **6. Read current on a mandate, never the dates**
>
> Almost half the mandates on file are withdrawn, and `endDate` is usually the end of the term, so a sitting board is often filed with an end date years ahead. Naming a person as a director of a company they left is the mistake `current` exists to stop. Former mandates are kept, because "who ran this in 2019" is a fair question.

> **7. A correction is the figure, not a duplicate**
>
> The financials route returns one filing per period. When a filing was corrected, it returns the correction, flagged `corrected`. A row flagged `comparative` was lifted from the prior-year column of a later filing: keep the numbers, but do not cite its reference, because it cannot be looked up.

> **8. An ownership entry carries its own age and confidence**
>
> Read `asOf` and `exact` before you treat a stake as current. An entry with no stake percentage, no date and `exact: false` is usually an old record from another system. `stakePercent` is a real percentage: 50 is half the company.


This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.