Companies and their licences

Licences for business modules are issued to a company, not to a person and not to a server. That one decision explains most of what you see in your account and in your Railbase — including the two situations that occasionally need fixing, both covered at the end of this page.

What a company is

A company is a real legal entity: its registered legal name, its registration number, its VAT/tax id and its country. Railbase and railbase.app hold the same record on both sides, and it is screened against sanctions lists before anything can be bought for it.

Two rules follow, and they are enforced rather than advised:

• One company, one record. Names are stored normalised, so "Acme inc." and "Acme Inc." are the same company and the second one is refused. You cannot end up with two records of one entity by typing its name differently.
• Real identity only. Registered name, registration number, VAT id and country are required. A company that has not passed screening cannot hold a licence.

Each company also has an id — a long identifier that never changes. It is the join key: the licence is issued against it, your server matches incoming requests against it, and every record inside your Railbase is stamped with it.

How your Railbase claims a company

For a licence to work, the company must exist on your server under the same id as in your account. There are two ways that happens:

• From the first-run wizard. When you set up Railbase and connect it to your railbase.app account, the wizard offers the companies already on the account. Pick one and it is created locally with the same id — that is the recommended path, because nothing can drift.
• From the marketplace. In your admin, Companies lists the account's companies and marks which ones this server already holds. Adopt here creates the missing one, again with the same id.

Once a server holds the company, the licence resolves and the module starts serving it — usually within a minute, on the next check-in.

Fixing: the same company registered twice

If two records of one company exist (typically from before the duplicate check existed), your account page shows them under one company, two records and offers to merge. On the operator side, railbase.app lists the same pairs — found both by name and by matching VAT/registration number, which catches the case where the two records were named differently.

Merging keeps one record and moves the other's licences onto it. The retired record is not deleted: it keeps its screening history and its payment history, and simply stops being offered for new purchases.

Which one to keep: the id your server actually runs. Merging moves the entitlement, never the data — records stored under the retired id stay where they are.

Fixing: the licence is on an id your server doesn't run

This happens when a company was created twice with different ids: once on railbase.app when you bought, and once by your Railbase when you set it up manually. Both are the same real company, but the licence is attached to one id while your server runs the other — so you have paid and nothing works.

Your Railbase detects this and shows the pair in Companies. Raising it from there records it on your account; the fix itself is done from Account → Companies on railbase.app, because it moves money and requires the account owner. Confirm the company name, and the licences move onto the id your server runs while the other id is retired.

The same caution applies: the entitlement moves, the data does not. Keep the id your server actually uses.

Where to look

What	Where
Companies on your account, and their ids	railbase.app → Account → Companies
Companies this server holds, and adoption	Your Railbase admin → Companies
Which company a licence covers, and releasing it	railbase.app → Account → Licenses
Merging duplicates	railbase.app → Account → Companies