The workflow for deciding whether to extend credit to an England & Wales company. Each step maps to information already on the profile. The whole run takes about five minutes and costs nothing.
Search by company name or 8-character company number. The index covers around 5.1 million companies registered in England & Wales and returns results as you type.
Before anything else, confirm three things on the profile: the registered name matches the one on your invoice or contract, the registered office fits, and the company status is what you expect. Active, Dormant, Liquidation and Dissolved each change the decision. Similar names are common; the company number is the only identifier that is unique.
Four signals matter more than any filed figure. Check them first, because they can end the assessment on their own:
Winding-up petitions. A creditor has asked the court to force the company into liquidation. On Black Flag Alert an active petition forces the risk rating to 10 (Distressed), whatever the accounts say.
County Court Judgments. Someone sued this company to get paid and won. Read the amounts and dates: a recent, large CCJ is a stronger signal than an old, small one.
Overdue filings. Accounts or confirmation statements late at Companies House. Companies under pressure often stop filing before anything else shows.
Charges. Mortgages and security granted over the company's assets. If most of the assets are already charged, unsecured creditors stand behind those lenders if the company fails.
The profile carries five years of filed accounts. Read them in this order:
Net assets. Positive means the company owns more than it owes. Negative net assets means liabilities exceed assets: the balance sheet is already underwater.
Profitability. The operating margin shows whether the trade itself makes money. One loss year can be a blip; several in a row is structural.
Gearing and interest cover. How much the company borrows against its own funds, and whether profit can pay the interest. Interest cover below 1x means profit does not even service the debt.
Cash and short-term cover. Whether liquid assets can cover what falls due within a year.
Then read the trend, not just the latest year. A company that looks fine this year but has deteriorated for three years is a worse risk than a stable one. Every ratio on the profile has a plain-English explanation next to it, so no accounting background is needed.
Ratios only mean something in context. A 2% operating margin is normal in some trades and a warning in others. A current ratio of 1.0 is tight for one sector and standard for another.
The profile places each figure at a sector percentile, showing where this company sits against other companies in the same sector rather than against an arbitrary bar. That separates companies that are weak for their trade from companies that simply operate in thin-margin trades.
Now set the commercial terms: credit limit, payment period, and whether to ask for up-front payment or security.
The profile gives you two aids. The risk rating (1–10, where 1 is lowest risk) summarises everything above in one number. And the profile carries a suggested credit exposure, derived from the company's financial capacity, to anchor your limit.
If the picture is mixed, you do not have to choose between full trust and no deal. Shrink the limit, shorten the terms, or take a guarantee. The evidence tells you how much risk you are actually pricing.
The assessment above is a snapshot. Accounts are filed up to nine months after a year-end, and a company's position can deteriorate long before the next filing lands.
Put the company on a watchlist. Alerts arrive when a new CCJ is registered, a winding-up petition appears, accounts go overdue, or the R-Score moves. The signals come from the public record itself: Companies House, HMCTS and The Gazette. So you act on the record, not on what the company tells you.
Monitoring is free with an account and takes one click.
The traditional version of this workflow means ordering a bureau report, waiting, and paying per lookup. Black Flag Alert assembles the same primary records the courts and the insolvency service use, into one scored profile, available the moment you search.
Every step above runs against the same free profile. No card and no trial period, and the search leaves no footprint on the company's record. That is the point of the product: credit intelligence that costs nothing to check, so you check it every time.