ASIC company data concepts explained
Plain-English guides to the ASIC register: companies, ACNs and ABNs, office holders, extracts, documents, charges, schemes, business names and registers, each mapped to asicapi fields.
The ASIC register is a large, coded dataset with decades of history behind it. Before you build on it, it helps to understand what ASIC actually records about a company, a person or a document, why some fields are empty for older records, and what the status and role codes mean in practice. These guides explain each part of the register in plain English and show how it maps to the JSON that asicapi returns.
Each concept page pairs with one or more API reference endpoints and, where the data is coded, with the ASIC code tables.
Companies and identifiers
Australian companies on the ASIC register
What ASIC records about a company, from ACN and type to directors, share capital and documents.
ACN, ABN, ARBN and ARSN explained
The difference between the four identifiers, how their check digits work, and how to validate them.
Company types, classes and sub-classes
Pty Ltd, public, no liability and listed companies, and how asicapi codes them.
Company status and deregistration
Registered, strike-off action in progress, deregistered and external administration statuses.
Current and historical company extracts
What an extract contains and how each section maps to endpoints.
Foreign companies and registered Australian bodies
How ASIC records ARBN entities, the local agent role, and what it holds about them.
Business names in the ASIC register
How business names differ from companies, their statuses and identifiers.
How ASIC company name search works
Identical-name rules, plurals, initials, acronyms, scoring and the 100 result cap.
People and office holders
Types of company office holders
Directors, secretaries, auditors, liquidators, administrators, receivers and responsible entities.
Directors and company secretaries
How appointments and cessations are recorded, the forms behind them, and how to verify a director.
External administration roles
Australian insolvency processes and the ASIC role codes for each appointment.
People in the ASIC register
How ASIC identifies a person, the search rules, and what a person extract contains.
Banned and disqualified persons registers
Disqualified directors and banned representatives, ban types, appeals and exceptions.
ASIC professional registers
Auditors, liquidators, legacy licensees and authorised representatives.
Documents, capital and security
ASIC documents and form codes
Document numbers, form codes such as Form 484, and how to order a document image.
Share capital and company members
Share classes, amounts paid and the top 20 members per class rule.
Company charges and the PPSR
Fixed and floating charges recorded before 2012 and how to retrieve them.
Registered office and company addresses
Address types, what a registered office means legally, and how asicapi returns them.
Managed investment schemes and ARSNs
Responsible entities, scheme categories and how a scheme extract differs.
Jurisdictions: ASIC and the states
How ASIC and the states share the registers and the controlling jurisdiction codes.
Webhooks for orders and offline searches
Receive order.ready, order.failed and offline_search.ready events from asicapi, verify the HMAC-SHA256 signature, and handle retries idempotently.
Australian companies on the ASIC register
What ASIC records about an Australian company, from ACN and company type to directors, share capital and documents, and how asicapi exposes it.