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Want a discount on every report you purchase? Then apply for a Tiered account and take advantage of our massive price reductions on all reports and document images, e.g. Comprehensive Company Reports for as little as £1.99 each, Document images for 99p each. Cheaper than Companies House!

How do I get a tiered account or upgrade from one tier to another?

Getting an account upgraded is really simple. If you are already have a PAYG or tiered account simply click on Update Package on your ‘My Account’ page and submit your first deposit (£20, £50, £100 or £250), and you’ll be able to purchase all credit reports at discounted rates.

Company Reports

What are credit reports?

Credit reports contain company details and financial information derived from Companies House documents and other resources, such as County Courts and demographic information.

Why do I need a credit report?

Credit reports are a great way to protect your company. If you are looking to form a partnership, or extend credit to another company then it is always useful to make yourself aware of their financial history and situation so that you can assess any possible risks. Being informed is the best way of protecting your company; accessing a credit report will enable you to make the right decision for your company, and can help protect you from entering a business relationship with a company that is a risk.

How long does it take?

Once you order your report, it will be available for you to view immediately on your computer screen. Customers can also logon to their checkthatcompany account to review all of their archived reports/images and save these documents to their hard drive if they so wish.

Why does checkthatcompany only offer one type of company report?

Other providers offer you different types of reports as a way of extracting more money from customers (up to £50 per report). We offer a Comprehensive Company Report containing every piece of data available on that company. For as little as £1.99 per report you can then choose the information that you need without having to pay ridiculous prices.

How do I order?

Once you have decided which company or director you are interested in, use the company/director search facility on the home page – from there you can choose the reports and document images you need. If you are looking to order more than one report, you may want to apply for a Tiered account offering you significant discounts on every report or document image you access.

Do I need the Company’s registered number?

The company’s registration number is not Vital to the search, but it will help you find the company you are looking for much more efficiently. If you enter just the company name our detailed search will search up to 9.4 million companies to find the business you are looking for.

How up to date are the reports?

The information we supply originates from a number of sources including Companies House, The London and Edinburgh Gazette and Registries Trust. We update our information every 24 hours.

How accurate is your information?

Through our information providers we maintain high standards of information to ensure the information is as accurate as possible. We aim to help you make credit decisions, but there should always be other forms of reference when making key credit decisions.

can’t find the company I am looking for?

All our information comes direct from Companies House, if you can’t find the company you are looking for, then it most probably hasn’t been registered at Companies House. So just email this query over to our Customer Service Team and we will perform a final check for you.

How can I tell if the company has money?

There may be many reasons why companies appear to have lots of ready cash, when in actual fact they have very little liquid cash to spend. This is why we show you full financial information, including key ratios, profit and loss and balance sheets. This information, through sophisticated algorithms, calculates the credit rating and potential risk, so that you can make an informed decision as to whether a company has money to spend.

How is the credit rating/limited calculated?

We pride ourselves in providing easy to understand reports, and this is demonstrated by our “traffic light” system of credit scoring. It really is as easy as it sounds with red advising you to be cautious, and green giving you a positive credit decision. Our credit ratings are equally as easy to understand with a score of 0 -100. A credit limit is given alongside the rating to give you an understanding of the recommended monthly amount of credit to offer the company.

Will the content of the company reports differ depending on company size?

The size of a company has an effect on many aspects of its operation, including its financial requirements and filing obligations.

To be classified as a small or medium company, there are certain criteria which you must fill.

As a small company, two of these three statements must be true:

• your annual turnover is not more than £2.8 million
• your balance sheet is not more than £1.4 million
• you have no more than 50 employees

Filing regulations for small companies include an abbreviated balance sheet and notes, auditor’s report if required (under special circumstances), no profit & loss.

As a medium company, two of these three statements must be true:

• your annual turnover is not more than £11 million
• your balance sheet is not more than £5.6 million
• you have no more than 250 employees

Filing regulations for medium companies include a full balance sheet, abbreviated profit & loss, auditors report, directors’ reports and notes and notes to accounts.

Credit and Risks

What is a credit limit?

The credit limit gives you an indication of a company’s capability to settle potential credit transactions. It uses the credit capacity and risk score of a company to help create a guide to the level of credit that this company should be able to settle. The credit limit is worked out differently for limited and non-limited companies.

How do you work out the credit limit for limited companies?

To work out the credit limit for a limited company, these three values are taken into consideration:

Cash flow - this is calculated as the company’s pre-tax profit plus depreciation charged against that profit. In the absence of any net cash flow from operations figures.

Working capital - this is calculated as the difference between the total current assets and total current liabilities.

Net worth - this is calculated as the total assets minus the total liabilities, where the former does not include any intangible assets.

The average of these 3 values is taken as the guide to the company’s credit capacity. The credit limit also takes into account a company’s risk score, so that high risk companies are less likely to be extended the same level of credit as low risk companies. This helps to protect creditors from extending high levels of credit to companies which are likely to become insolvent. The final value is taken as a percentage of the credit capacity, where the percentage is directly proportional to risk score, i.e. the greater the score the higher the percentage, which can be from 2.5 to 25%.

There are exceptions to this formula, which is industry specific.

There are some companies that will not have a credit limit attached. These companies will have scored below 15 or alternatively all elements from the balance sheet and cash flow will be negative.

Newly incorporated companies - the credit limit for newly incorporated companies, depending on the legal status of the company, is set a credit limit between £500 and £5,000. The limit will then increase over time unless adverse data is filed. Once a set of accounts has been filed the normal methodology for the calculation applies.

Contract limit

Contract limits give you an indication of the value of contract that this company would be able to provide. Contract limits are calculated as a percentage of turnover.

The latest disclosed turnover reflects the level of successful contracts completed, hence gives an indication of future capacity. Where turnover is not disclosed (abridged accounts), an estimated figure is used based on asset values and appropriate industry data.

As with credit limits, the higher the score the greater the percentage to apply (range = 2.5% to 35%). This measurement views the applicant as a supplier of goods and services, whereas a credit limit assesses the applicant as a purchaser. The maximum value is capped at £500 million and the minimum value is now £500.

The resulting limit should be regarded as a yardstick for maximum contract capacity on a single contract over a 12 month period. A contract limit combines relative risk and absolute measurement of contract capacity.

How do you work out the credit limit for non-limited companies?

The credit limit for non-limited companies is worked out according to the standard industrial classification (SIC) of that company, the number of employees and the company’s U score.

Some non-limited companies will not have a U score or a credit limit. This can occur in one of the following situations:

• when there is insufficient information on a business
• when the business has more than 4 outstanding County Court Judgments in the last 6 months and fewer than 25 employees
• when the value of CCJs is greater than £2,000 in the last 24 months
• when there have been more than 3 CCJs in the last 12 months
• when there are more than 10 CCJs in total
• when there is not enough information to estimate financial strength where the business is engaged in certain financial activities, making an estimate of financial strength inappropriate

What is a risk score?

The risk score is one of the key elements of a company credit report. It is a really useful tool which allows you to assess the risk of a company becoming insolvent during the course of the next year. Limited and non-limited companies have different methods for working out their level of risk. The risk score for non-limited companies is also known as the U score.

How does the risk score work for limited companies?

The risk score is based on an unique model which has been developed with Scorex (UK) Ltd, which assesses the probability of a particular company becoming insolvent based upon it’s financial details and history.

The risk score lets you compare the risk associated with a particular company against the background rate of insolvency.

For example, approximately 2% of the trading population become insolvent over the course of a year.

If the risk score of a particular company is 10 or less, we have found that they have a 50% chance of becoming insolvent, which is 25 times the background rate. This shows that the company is a high risk as it is 25 times more likely to fail than the average company.

If the risk score of a particular company is 80 or over, we have found that they have a 99.75% chance of surviving. The probability of them becoming insolvent is only 0.25%, which is a tenth of the background rate. This shows that the company is ten times LESS likely to fail than the average company and so is a low risk. These calculations can only give an indication of the likelihood of an event occurring and cannot accurately predict what will happen. However, they are very useful when considering the risks of involvement with a particular company.

How does the U score work?

Because the risk of a non-limited company becoming bankrupt is higher than that of a limited company, they use a slightly different model to work out the level of risk. The background rate of insolvency for non-limited companies is 5.3%, and U scores are calculated by slightly different financial criteria than risk scores for limited companies.

The U score works along the same basic principles as the risk score, in that the score is between 1 and 100, with the lower scores indicating the highest risk and the highest scores indicating the lowest risk.

Why do we need risk scores?

Risk scores help you work out the likelihood of a company becoming insolvent or bankrupt over the course of the next year. This helps you in a number of different scenarios, such as if you are trying to calculate what level of credit to extend to a company.

Risk scores help you protect your own company by knowing the level of risk associated with doing business with another. It makes you aware of the probability of that company becoming insolvent or bankrupt, and allows you to take appropriate measures to ensure that your company remains safe.

Director Reports

What is included in a Director Report?

These reports are for private & public limited companies based in the UK (PLC & Ltd) and Eire. It contains the following information:

• Personal details
• Report summary
• Live directorships trading/non-trading companies
• Directorships of dissolved companies
• Directorships of companies with insolvency proceedings
• Resigned directorships

How extensive and accurate is your director database?

The directors database is updated on a daily basis through feeds from Companies House, and via the keying of Irish directors from the original documents provided by the Irish CRO.

Stringent measures are in place to ensure high standards of accuracy are maintained by continuous sampling and measurement. The current accuracy level is 99.6%.

Document Images

What other services can I access with www.checkthatcompany.co.uk ?

You can also use checkthatcompany to view a company's filing history and purchase copies of document images, as well as a selection of company and director reports, all online. Payment is made by credit or debit card and all products are delivered electronically to a unique, secure download area.

What is included in the database of company document images?

With checkthatcompany you are able to access every single document within our image bank covering the following image types:

• Accounts
• Annual returns
• Capital and shareholder
• New incorporation
• Mortgage
• Liquidation
• Change of name
• Miscellaneous

How far back do the document images date?

Thanks to an extensive project of backscanning we are now able to provide original company filing documents pre-1996 to enable amongst other things the ability to index the most salient documents (such as mem & arts, cert of inc’s, change of name etc.) and allow them to be downloaded instantly.