Every freelancer in the EU is legally required to screen B2B clients against sanctions lists. Almost none do, because the tooling costs €10,000 a year. Starting today, InvoiceUp does it for you — one click per client, against the same consolidated datasets that large banks use.
Under the sixth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive, working with a sanctioned counterparty isn't an unfortunate mistake — it's a criminal offence. The same applies to US OFAC rules, UK Treasury lists, and UN consolidated lists. Enforcement has historically targeted banks and large enterprises, but the legal obligation falls on every business. "I didn't know" is not a defence.
Open any client in InvoiceUp. A new section on the client drawer shows the sanctions status — Not checked, Clear, Match, or Check failed — with a button to run or re-run the check. The query hits OpenSanctions, which consolidates the EU, UK, OFAC, UN, and Politically Exposed Persons datasets into a single searchable index. Results above 85% similarity are flagged, with a breakdown of which dataset matched and what role the listed individual holds.
Matches are cached per client for seven days so you aren't re-billing against the API every time you open a drawer. Names change rarely; datasets update weekly; the seven-day window is the right cadence to balance freshness and cost. You can always force a re-check.
Under EU AML6, "I didn't know my client was sanctioned" is not a legal defence. One click is.
For common names, false positives are expected. The match panel shows the listed person's name, the datasets they appear on (EU Consolidated, OFAC SDN, etc.), and their topics (sanction, terrorism financing, PEP, etc.). Your job is to review these against what you know about the client — address, industry, country of operation — and confirm or dismiss. We don't auto-dismiss on your behalf; the law puts the judgment call on you.
When a match is confirmed, the legal obligation under EU AML6 is to freeze any pending payments and file a Suspicious Activity Report with the appropriate financial intelligence unit. The UI includes a short reminder of this — not to panic you, but because "I didn't know there was a reporting obligation" is a second defence that doesn't work.
Weekly auto-rechecks are coming — that's a v2 feature scheduled for the next iteration. So is bulk screening across your whole book in one click, and a CSV export for auditors. If any of these would change whether this feature matters to you, tell us — those decisions are still open.
Sanctions screening is the compliance feature that enterprise tooling gate-keeps the hardest. Refinitiv, Dow Jones, and LexisNexis each charge five figures annually per seat for exactly this, and nobody under a certain size ever gets to buy it. OpenSanctions flipped that by making the data free and well-maintained. We wired it into the one place freelancers already spend time — the client they're about to invoice.