A guide published by Dotto
Business leads: finding customers in the public record
Australian governments keep open registers of who is in business, how a company stands on the record, and what government is buying. This guide takes six official sources in turn, read the way a business looking for customers would read them: what each one shows, what it leaves out, and where its limits are.
Each page lists the official pages its facts came from, and fees, thresholds and dates are given as at October 2026.
Six sources, one folio each
They are entered here in the order a search usually runs: first who a business is, then whether its company record is in order, then where government work is posted and the rules that come with it, and last, the law on emailing a business you found.
| Folio | Register | Kept by | What it shows | The guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | ABN Lookup | The Australian Business Register, within the ATO; the website is hosted by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources | Free access to public ABN information: whether an ABN is active or cancelled, the business type, GST status and public details | Reading an ABN Lookup record |
| 02 | Company and organisation registers | Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) | Basic company details for free; extracts and copies of lodged documents for a fee; a free alert when new documents are lodged | Checking a company on ASIC’s registers |
| 03 | Tender portals | AusTender for the Australian Government; each state and territory government for its own | Open approaches to market, planned procurements and contracts awarded | Where government tenders are posted |
| 04 | Selling to Government | Department of Finance, through its Selling to Government website | The targets, thresholds and payment terms that apply when a small business sells to the Australian Government | Selling to government as a small business |
| 05 | Indigenous Procurement Policy | National Indigenous Australians Agency | Commonwealth targets for buying from Indigenous businesses, the Mandatory Set Aside, and the eligibility changes that began on 1 July 2026 | The Indigenous Procurement Policy |
| 06 | Spam Act, Schedule 2 | The Spam Act 2003, enforced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) | When an email address published for someone’s work counts as consent to receive marketing | When a published business email counts as consent |
What the record leaves out
Each register is generous in one direction and silent in another. Four silences matter most to anyone using them to find customers.
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No contact details
How to reach anyone
ABN Lookup gives a business’s state and postcode, “but does not include the address, email, telephone or other contact details”. ASIC says officeholder addresses are not available in its company extract.
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No warranty
Whether a business is sound
The ABR says a listing “is not a warranty” that the entity is commercially viable or still in existence. For a company’s standing, ASIC’s registers say more.
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No promise
Which tenders will go ahead
AusTender’s planned procurements “are subject to revision, withdrawal or cancellation”, and are published for planning only.
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No consent
Whether you may email them
Under the Spam Act, consent “may not be inferred from the mere fact” that an address has been published. There is one narrow exception for work addresses, set out in its own folio.
