Before you sign a contract, extend payment terms, or onboard a supplier in the UK, there is a free background check you can run in about a minute. Everything you need is on the public Companies House register. Most small businesses skip it, not because it is hard, but because they do not know which five things to look at.
Here they are, plus how to turn the whole thing into one structured API call when you have more than one company to check.
The five things I check on any UK company
Status and age. Active is the baseline, but the incorporation date matters too. A six-month-old company asking for 60-day terms is a different risk profile than a fifteen-year-old one. Both are on the register.
Are the accounts overdue? This is the single loudest free red flag. UK companies must file annual accounts by a deadline. If they are late, Companies House says so, and it often precedes worse news.
