Watch who you trade with
A company going under is public information long before anyone acts on it. The problem is that noticing means opening eleven Companies House tabs on a Monday morning, and nobody does that twice. Below is how I automate the looking, why the register on its own is not enough, and the run where a company the register still called active turned out to have a petition against it.
The questionHow do I find out when a UK supplier or customer is in trouble before it hits me?
How the working version is put together
Give it a list, not a lookup
One line per company you sell to or buy from. Company numbers get looked up directly. Names get searched on the register. The unit of work is your list rather than a single company, because the value here is the sweep: you want to know which of the forty just got worse, not to check one you already suspect.
Match exactly, or hand it back
A name is only accepted when the register's top hit is the same name, allowing for Ltd against Limited. Anything looser comes back unmatched with the closest candidates and their numbers attached, so a person decides. Silently turning Acme into Acme Widgets Limited would put the wrong company on a credit hold, and that is a worse outcome than a blank row.
Read the register and the notices together
The current state comes from the official Companies House REST API, on your own free key. The public notices come from The Gazette, which is where insolvency proceedings are published as they happen. Two sources, because one of them is always behind the other and it is not always the same one.
Compare against the last run
Everything is measured against a stored snapshot, so what comes back is the difference rather than a profile dump. A status change. A new insolvency notice. Accounts going overdue, or the confirmation statement going overdue. A new charge registered over the company's assets, with the name of who registered it. Officers leaving in a batch. The registered office moving. Each change carries a plain sentence and a link to the page that proves it.
Sort into OK, WATCH and ACTION
ACTION is deliberately hard to earn. It is kept for the things that genuinely change how you trade with someone, like an open insolvency notice or accounts filed well past the deadline. Everything softer sits at WATCH. If ACTION fires every week it stops meaning anything, and a risk report nobody opens is worse than none.
The gap that makes this worth running
On a real run against a real company, Companies House listed it as active and its own insolvency flag came back false. The Gazette carried a creditor's petition to wind it up, with a hearing date. Read the register alone and that company scores OK.
That gap is the entire product. Filings arrive when somebody files them; notices are published when the thing happens. Another row from the same run was already in administration with its accounts one thousand one hundred and sixty three days overdue, which is the opposite failure: information sitting on the register for years with nobody reading it. Both of those are the public record. Neither is a client, and I have no customers for this tool to point at.
Why it searches by company number
The Gazette search is full text. Search it by company name and you get notices about other companies that merely mention a street with your supplier's name in it. So the search runs on the company number under the corporate insolvency notice codes instead, which returns nothing it should not.
The honest cost of that choice is real and worth stating. A notice too old to carry a company number in its text will not be found this way. The register's own insolvency record covers exactly that case, which is why both halves are read rather than one. I would rather tell you where the seam is than let you find it.
What the record can and cannot tell you
This reports what has been filed and what has been published. There is no credit file behind it and no rating agency standing over it. It is not advice about who to trade with, and I would not want it read as any. You decide what a change means for your terms.
The register also lags reality by however long a filing takes. A company can be in trouble for months before anything reaches Companies House. That is a limit of the source, not something a tool fixes, and the Gazette half narrows it rather than closing it.
What it costs to run
The Companies House key is free and takes about two minutes to create. The Gazette needs nothing at all: no account, no key. The hosted Actor charges one cent per company actually watched, and a name it could not match or a lookup that failed costs nothing.
Requests are paced well under what both sources allow, so a long list takes a while on purpose. That is the right trade. A sweep that finishes slowly beats one that gets your key throttled halfway down the list.
When I would tell you not to bother
If you have four suppliers and you would hear within a day that one was in trouble, you do not need this. It earns its keep on a list long enough that nobody is watching all of it.
If what you actually want is a credit limit or a payment-behaviour score, this is not that and will disappoint you. It reads the register and the notices. It has no opinion on whether you should extend anyone thirty days.
What lands on your desk
- One row per company, carrying what changed since the last run rather than a profile dump
- A verdict of OK, WATCH or ACTION, with the reasons written in plain sentences
- An evidence link on every change, so anyone can check it themselves
- Honest matching: exact or unmatched with candidates, never a guess
- If you want this wired into credit holds, a weekly digest or your CRM, that is the work I do
Open the proof
Published case studies of systems that are running. Each links to the thing itself.
Get a free Companies House API key ↗The Gazette, the UK's official public record ↗My n8n creator profile ↗
Questions this page answers
- What does it actually report?
- The difference since the last run, rather than a profile dump. A status change. A new insolvency notice. Accounts or a confirmation statement going overdue. A new charge over the company's assets, with the name of whoever registered it. Officers leaving in a batch. The registered office moving.
- Why read The Gazette as well as Companies House?
- Because the register can be behind. On a real run a company was listed as active with its insolvency flag false while The Gazette carried a creditor's petition to wind it up, with a hearing date. Read the register alone and that company scores OK.
- Why does it search The Gazette by company number instead of by name?
- Name search there is full text, so it returns notices about unrelated companies that merely mention a similar street name. Searching by number returns nothing it should not. The cost is that a notice too old to carry a number is missed, which is what the register's own insolvency record covers.
- Is this a credit score?
- It is not, and I would not want it read as one. There is no credit file behind it and no rating agency standing over it. It reports what has been filed on the register and what has been published in the notices, and the judgement about who you extend terms to stays yours.
- What happens when it cannot match a name?
- It comes back unmatched with the closest candidates and their company numbers attached, so a person decides. It never guesses, because putting the wrong company on a credit hold is worse than a blank row.
Want this built and handed over working?
One line is enough to start. You get an honest answer on fit, and a number rather than a discovery call.
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