BRP Test Data Generator

How the BRP Test Data Generator Works

1. 01Set the number of records, the age range and the reference year the dates are calculated against
2. 02Choose how many people of each life event you need, from married and divorced to deceased with a surviving partner
3. 03Pick the output: a compact overview to read, the full structure for completeness, or your own header row
4. 04Check the mapping table and set any column the automatic guess did not recognise
5. 05Download the CSV, or the Excel variant if you only want to read it

Getting a BRP Import Accepted the First Time

Almost every rejected import comes down to column names rather than the file format. Take a file the target system already accepts, paste its first line into the header field, and let the generator produce the same columns in the same order. Leave placeholder and unused columns mapped to nothing so they stay empty instead of disappearing, because many importers check the column count. Then start small, with ten records and no unusual names, and only add edge cases once a clean file is accepted.

When to Use the BRP Test Data Generator

Use it when a system consumes person data from the Basisregistratie Personen and you need a realistic population to test it: pension administrations, insurers, municipalities, healthcare and any chain test where a death, a marriage or a move has to travel through several systems.

Common Use Cases

• —Life event testing: death with a surviving partner and a minor child, marriage, divorce, remarriage and moving abroad in one population
• —Import testing: match the header of a target system and see the file accepted instead of rejected
• —Correspondence testing: long surnames, apostrophes and voorvoegsels show how letter templates and address labels hold up
• —Edge case testing: confidential records, records under investigation and people without a fixed address
• —Volume testing: up to 5,000 person records in one file

Expert Tips

• ✻Note the seed in your test report so the same population can be regenerated later
• ✻Map placeholder columns to nothing rather than removing them, so the column count stays what the target expects
• ✻Turn the Excel option off for anything you import, it adds a sep= line that strict parsers read as data
• ✻Raise the share of unusual names once a clean file is accepted, that is where letter templates break

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a BRP persoonslijst?→

It is how the Dutch Basisregistratie Personen holds one person: a set of numbered categories rather than a flat record. 01 is the person, 02 and 03 the parents, 04 nationality, 05 marriage or registered partnership, 06 death, 07 registration, 08 residence and 09 children. A category numbered fifty higher holds the history of that category, so 55 is an earlier partnership and 58 a previous address.

Are the BSN numbers real?→

No. They are random numbers that satisfy the elfproef, which is what validation checks. They are not issued to any person. They also never start with a zero, because a spreadsheet or an importer reads such a value as a number and silently drops the first digit, after which it is no longer a valid BSN.

My import says no fields were matched. What now?→

That message almost always means the column names are not in the target system's vocabulary, not that the file is malformed. Switch the output mode to match your own header row, paste the first line of a file that system does accept, and the generator will produce those exact column names in that exact order.

What is the difference between the compact and the full output?→

Compact gives a short overview of about thirty columns: who the person is, where they live, the partner, an earlier partner, the first child and the life event the record was generated for. It is the version you scan yourself or hand to a colleague. Full structure writes every field the generator knows, across all the categories, for when the receiving system wants completeness. Both hold exactly the same people.

What happens to columns I do not map?→

They stay in the file and are written empty. That matters, because many importers check the number of columns, and placeholder or unused columns are part of the expected layout even when they carry no data.

Which date format should I use?→

yyyymmdd is the default because that is what most BRP exports carry, so 11 March 1995 is written as 19950311. ISO and Dutch notation are available for systems that expect them.

Can I reproduce the same file later?→

Yes. The seed plus the settings fully determine the output, so noting the seed in your test report is enough to regenerate exactly the same records.

Does my data leave the browser?→

No. Generation runs entirely in JavaScript on your own machine, including the header row you paste. Nothing is uploaded and the tool works offline once the page has loaded.