Read the direction, not the snapshot
Any single year can be explained away: a big contract, a one-off cost, a timing quirk. The signal is the direction across three years. A current ratio falling from 1.8 to 1.3 to 1.0 is a company gradually losing its buffer. Gearing climbing from 60% to 90% to 130% is a company borrowing its way through. Each move alone is survivable. The pattern is the story.
Where the numbers hide
Filed accounts at Companies House come in several sizes. Full and group accounts show everything, including the profit and loss. Small company accounts may omit the P&L from the public copy. Micro-entity and filleted accounts show very little: often just a two-line balance sheet. When a company files the smallest accounts it can, you have less to read, and the absence of detail is itself information. Note what the filing actually contains before drawing comfort from it.
The questions the ratios cannot answer
Accounts are filed up to nine months after the year-end, so they describe the past. Between filings, the live signals matter more: CCJs, winding-up petitions, charges and overdue filings. And the quality of the assets behind the ratios matters too: a current ratio built on debtors that never pay is weaker than one built on cash. That is why a Black Flag Alert profile pairs the ratios with the live register and a data-quality note on every filing.
Every company profile shows these ratios computed, explained and set against the sector. Search any company free.