How it works and our wording rules

Where the record comes from

When you search a company, we read its record from the Companies House public data service in real time. We look at the company profile, its officers, any charges registered against it, its insolvency record, and, for each current director, the list of companies they have been appointed to. We bring those together into a single summary.

For the statistics page, we use the Insolvency Service monthly company insolvency figures. Both sources are Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence.

How current it is

A company record is read at the moment you search, and we show the date we read it. We hold a recent copy for a short time so the site stays fast and stays well inside the data service limits, so a figure may be a few hours old. The full, live record is always a click away on Companies House, and we link to it on every result.

Our wording rules

These rules are the heart of the site. They keep it honest and fair to every company and every person named on the register.

• Every statement is a fact from the public register, shown with its date.
• We never rate, score, rank or predict. There is no overall verdict and no colour that means good or bad for a whole company.
• We do not use words like risky, failing, struggling or about to go bust. We describe the register state, such as accounts shown as overdue or an active strike off proposal.
• A row marked for attention reflects a state the register itself records. It is a flag to read the detail, not a judgement.
• For directors, we show counts from the register and nothing more. We state plainly that a dissolved or wound up company in someone's history is not, by itself, evidence of any wrongdoing.
• Where a term needs explaining, we explain it in plain words next to the fact.

About director track records

For each current director we show how many companies they have been appointed to and the current status of those companies, for example how many are active, dissolved or in an insolvency process. These are counts taken directly from the public register. Companies close for many ordinary reasons, and a closed company in a person's history says nothing on its own about how they run a business. We show the numbers so you can see the full picture and check the record yourself.

Public register information, not advice.