Before you commit.
Read the company record.

A name is only the start.

Find the registered name and company number, then compare them with the business named on your quote, agreement or invoice. A trading name may differ from the legal name. Companies with similar names can be separate legal entities.

Company Trust Check searches UK registered-company records. Sole traders and some other business arrangements will not have a Companies House company number. A missing search result does not establish that a business is dishonest or does not exist.

Read the status alongside the dates.

Check the reported company status, incorporation date, registered office and filing timetable. Read any overdue markers in their context. An active registration is not a promise that a company will pay an invoice or finish a job.

Look at previous company names and the filing history. Keep the date of an event separate from the date a document was filed and the time the report retrieved it.

Every figure needs a period.

A balance sheet describes a dated accounting position. It is not a live bank balance. Look at the period, whether figures relate to the company or a group, and which amounts were actually disclosed.

The report keeps available filed figures and their calculations together. A missing value is not zero. If the company has not yet filed accounts, or a document could not be extracted reliably, the report should tell you what remains unknown.

Follow the appointment, not just the name.

Read current and resigned officers and any available previous appointments. Company Trust Check links officer connections through official Companies House appointment records, keeping each connected company’s evidence separate.

A matching person’s name alone does not prove identity. A director’s appointment at another company also does not make that company’s history a finding about the business you are checking. Read the connection and its limits before drawing a conclusion.

Make room for the difficult details.

Read recorded charges, insolvency information and any collected public-register findings. Follow the original source, check the company number or stated matching basis, and note whether a record is current, satisfied, historic or incomplete.

Where a filed insolvency document supports reliably validated creditor figures, the report shows the dated amounts and their provenance. It does not turn an unavailable document or an incomplete check into a finding that no debts exist.

“Not checked” is useful information too.

A completed source check with no matching result is different from an unavailable source, a licence restriction or an unfinished search. Read the coverage section alongside the findings.

Companies House makes its public company information available free of charge. Company Trust Check brings collected evidence into a readable report with linked sources; it is independent of the public bodies whose records it uses.

Public records can be incomplete or inaccurate. No report guarantees an outcome. Trust Score is not active, and this guide is not financial or legal advice.