Matching Methodology & 3-State Honesty Rule

LicenceCheck applies a deterministic blocking and similarity scoring algorithm to match user input lists against official government licence registries.

The 3-State Honesty Rule

To ensure zero false billing and eliminate incorrect support inquiries, LicenceCheck output is strictly structured:

• ACTIVE / LAPSED / REVOKED / CLOSED: Billed at $0.05. Matched to an official government licence record.
• NOT_IN_LICENSED_CATEGORY: Free ($0.00). The business type (e.g. software consultancy) does not require a city licence in that jurisdiction.
• NO_COVERAGE: Free ($0.00). The city has not yet been ingested into our archive.
• AMBIGUOUS: Free ($0.00). Multiple candidates exist at the target address and match confidence is below 0.88. We refuse to guess.