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Identifying different parts of your business

The New Zealand Business Number (NZBN) allows businesses to digitally share their core information quickly and securely with others. Now businesses can extend beyond their NZBN and identify different areas of their business such as branch, department and location by using Organisation Parts.

As the next stage in the evolution of the NZBN, Organisation Parts will make it even easier for you to connect and interact with other businesses and government agencies.

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About Organisation Parts

Organisation Parts are identifiers linked to your NZBN that you can create for different parts of your business. They allow parts of your business to be uniquely identified using information that’s specific to them rather than your legal entity. Like the NZBN, Organisation Parts are unique 13-digit Global Location Numbers (GLNs) supplied by GS1 New Zealand(external link). All businesses can have 2 free Organisation Parts, and you're able to purchase more if you need them.

Using NZBN Organisation Parts, larger or more complex kiwi businesses can streamline and automate systems.

Read the transcript

Video transcript

Hundreds of thousands of kiwi businesses are already using their NZBN to link to the core business information they need to share, making it easier to connect and interact digitally with customers, suppliers, other businesses, and government agencies.

Smaller businesses may find the NZBN is the only digital identifier they need. However, larger more complex businesses may benefit from taking this to the next level by using globally unique identifiers for different parts of their business. This creates exciting new possibilities, for example, a branch of one business can interact directly with the department of another, streamlining ordering, delivery, and invoicing.

Organisation Parts will make it easier to track product development for example from the paddock to the plate. The NZBN, and Organisation Parts, provide the common standard and shared network which is supporting New Zealand's journey towards digital innovation. They will help future-proof businesses by helping to prepare for unexpected events and to take advantage of new opportunities. To find out more, visit nzbn.govt.nz

Each Organisation Part Number you create can have the following information linked to it:

Organisation Part Name — This is a label that’s meaningful to you and helps you know what the Organisation Part identifies. It will be visible if you make your Organisation Part public.
Organisation Part Purpose — You can use this to identify why you'll use the Organisation Part.
Status — Active or Inactive
Addresses
Contact details — Email addresses and phone numbers
GST Number.

Why you might use Organisation Parts

If you're a smaller business you may find the only digital identifier you need is your NZBN to identify your business to others. However, if you're a larger or more complex business you may find it useful to use Organisation Parts alongside your NZBN, to identify different branches, departments and locations.

Organisation Parts improve the reliability and accuracy of information so, for example, goods can be delivered to the right address and invoices to the correct place. Using a common, global standard will also make it easier to streamline and automate systems and to unlock opportunities for future innovation.

Organisation Parts for eInvoicing

If your organisation is large or complex and you are in the process of implementing eInvoicing, you may find that Organisation Parts can help streamline your eInvoicing processes. Organisation Parts can be used in place of an NZBN if there is a need to send or receive eInvoices at a more granular level than the NZBN legal entity.

Creating Organisation Parts to represent your organisation's different business units, locations and/or expense systems can help to ensure eInvoices are routed to the right place.

GS1’s Use Guide [PDF 1.46MB](external link) provides more information on the potential use cases for organisation parts.

How to get an Organisation Part

You can create your Organisation Parts via MyNZBN.

What you need before you start

To create new Organisation Parts, there are a couple of things you’ll need:

A RealMe® login (if you don’t have one, you can create one the first time you log in)
Confirmed authority over your business.

To get your free Organisation Parts

Every business with an NZBN can get 2 free Organisation Parts.

Log in to your MyNZBN dashboard.
Select the NZBN you want to create an Organisation Part for.
On its NZBN details screen, select the 'Create Organisation Part' option on the right side of the screen.
Once you complete the information required, your Organisation Part will immediately appear on the NZBN details page.

Need more Organisation Parts?

If you have allocated your 2 free Organisation Parts, you can license additional ones.

If you're creating 5 or less

You can create individual Organisation Part numbers in MyNZBN using the same process as above at $60 each (plus GST) for the GS1 licence fee. You will need to provide your contact details to GS1 when you license your first additional number.

If you're creating more than 5

GS1 New Zealand members can license Organisation Parts in bulk, which is more cost effective. If you are not a GS1 member and need more than 5 Organisation Parts, we recommend that you discuss membership options with GS1 New Zealand to enable you to license larger volumes at a lower licensing fee.

GS1 New Zealand(external link)

You can set the privacy settings

Each Organisation Part is a globally unique identifier which links to the core business information for a part of your business. Depending on how you plan to use your Organisation Parts, this information can be set to either:

Public — can be seen by anyone searching the NZBN website or requesting NZBN data
Private — can only be seen by Authorised users for your NZBN
Shared — can be seen by Authorised users of your NZBN and any businesses and other organisations you choose.

When you no longer need an Organisation Part

If you no longer need an Organisation Part, you can make it ‘Inactive’ and you can ‘reactivate’ it again at a later date. It is not possible to delete Organisation Parts from your NZBN.

Ministry of Health (MoH) COVID Poster Location

Organisation Parts have been used to identify business locations, making it possible to generate the QR code posters that enable the Ministry of Health NZ COVID Tracer system.

If you provided your NZBN when you created your QR code poster, ‘MoH COVID Poster Location’ Organisation Parts will be listed under your NZBN on the NZBN Register. Log in to MyNZBN to see if Organisation Parts have been linked to your NZBN.

Managing 'MoH COVID Poster Location’ Organisation Parts

Changing your physical address

If you change the physical address for your business, you will need to contact the Ministry of Health to create a new QR code poster and 'MoH COVID Poster Location' Organisation Part.

NZ COVID Tracer app — Ministry of Health(external link)

You should update the status of any ‘MoH COVID Poster Location’ Organisation Part you no longer use to ‘Inactive’ in MyNZBN.

The default privacy setting is 'shared'

Only someone with authority over your NZBN, and the Ministry of Health can see the information in your ‘MoH COVID Poster Location’ Organisation Part.

You can choose to change the privacy setting to public. If you make this information public, it can be seen by anyone searching the NZBN website or requesting NZBN data. Alternatively, you can share these Organisation Parts with any specific businesses you choose.

Updating and re-using your MoH COVID Poster Organisation Part

You can re-use a ‘MoH COVID Poster Location’ for another purpose if you want to identify the same physical location to another business or government agency. You can do this by adding another “Purpose” to the Organisation Part in MyNZBN. You will also need to change the privacy settings of the Organisation Part to either “Public” or “Shared” if you would like other businesses or government agencies to be able to view this organisation part.

You can update some of the information for these Organisation Parts, however details like the physical address are essential for COVID-19 tracing purposes and cannot be changed.