FAQ's

Credit Reports contain key information on businesses in order to give you a guide to their financial health and stability. The inclusion of a credit rating and limit will give you an idea of the likelihood of the company going into liquidation and a guide as to how much credit you can extend to them under standard terms.

Why should I use a credit report?

It’s a great idea to use credit reports in order to help protect your business from the threat of bad debt. You can use Credit reports to help you make informed decisions as to how you should be doing business with. By reducing your exposure to risk you can help protect your cashflow and look to do business with reliable partners.

What type of reports do you supply?

The Creditsafe UK on-line shop supplies three types of reports. A limited company Credit report which contains full details including financial data on limited companies, a non-limited company credit report which gives you all available details on non-limited businesses, and a Director Report which gives you information on individual company directors including details of all their current and previous directorships.

Where do you source the data in your reports?

Creditsafe takes original documents from Companies House, the Registry Trust and the London and Edinburgh Gazettes as the basis for its data. Unlike many others we only work with original source data and process it ourselves in order to ensure that our information is both up to date and as accurate as possible.

How accurate is your information?

We maintain high standards of information and employ a team of specialist data analysts to ensure the information is as accurate as possible. We aim to give you a guide to help you make credit decisions, but there should always be other forms of reference when making key credit decisions.

How up to date are your reports?

The information within Creditsafe business reports is sourced directly from a number of sources including Companies House, The London and Edinburgh Gazette and Registries Trust. We update our information every 24 hours.

How do you indicate if a company is credit worthy?

Creditsafe is proud of its easy to understand business credit reports, and this is demonstrated by our 'traffic light' system of credit scoring. It really is as easy as it sounds with red advising you to be cautious, and green giving you a positive credit decision. Our credit ratings are equally as easy to understand with a score of 0 -100. A credit limit is given alongside the rating to give you an understanding of the recommended monthly amount of credit to offer the company.

What is in a Creditsafe Limited Company Credit Report?

A Creditsafe Limited Company credit report is one of the most comprehensive you can purchase on the internet and offers unrivalled value for money. The report consists of a simple summary page giving you all the key information you could need along with the Credit rating and limit along with a summary of the company’s key financial data. The report also contains full financial information for the last three years, all CCJ information, a Group structure (where available), a useful summary of key events along with details of the company’s directors. In short it will give you all the information you need to make a quick decision along with all the detailed information for a more thorough examination.

What is included in a Creditsafe Non-limited company report?

A Creditsafe Non-limited company Credit report will contain all the essential data you need to make a decision regarding a non-limited company. All the key data including rating and limit is included in a useful summary page and the report also gives full detail on the business, any CCJ information and key contact information.

Why is there a difference between Limited and Non-limited reports?

Legally Limited and Non-limited companies have different regulations applying to them concerning what data they have to file. Non-limited companies are not obliged to file their accounts at Companies House so we cannot include their financial information.

Why don’t all limited reports include all financial information?

Not all limited companies have to file their full accounts. Limited companies can be categorised as Small Medium or Large and file accordingly, therefore we can not always include their full financial information.

To be classified as a small or medium company, there are certain criteria which must be fulfilled:

To be seen as a small company, two of the following statements must be true:

annual turnover is not more than £2.8 million
balance sheet is not more than £1.4 million
no more than 50 employees

Small companies need only file an abbreviated balance sheet and notes, auditor’s report if required (under special circumstances), and no profit & loss.

For a medium company, two of these three statements must be true:

annual turnover is not more than £11 million
balance sheet is not more than £5.6 million
no more than 250 employees

Medium companies have to file a full balance sheet, an abbreviated profit & loss, auditors report, directors’ reports and notes and notes to accounts.

Large companies have to file a full balance sheet and profit and loss as well as auditors report, directors’ reports and notes and notes to accounts.

What does a Credit rating represent?

The Credit rating represents the likelihood of a company going bankrupt in the next 12 months using a score from 0-100. We also use a simple easy to understand “traffic light” system with red advising you to be cautious, and green giving you a positive credit decision.

How do you calculate a Credit rating?

We use a sophisticated algorithmic system which is probably the most predictive in the industry today. It takes account of a wide range of factors and historic references to calculate the likelihood of business failure.

What is a Credit Limit?

The Creditsafe Credit limit is the maximum amount that could be advanced in any one calendar month, assuming standard payment terms of 30 days beyond the month of invoice. Therefore the same maximum amount could be advanced in the next calendar month.

What about new companies who have yet to file any data?

Our system uses a wide range of non-financial data and a appraisal of the company’s directors to give an accurate assessment of a business even when newly established helping to build trust where appropriate at an early stage.

Can you help me understand the details of the financial accounts of a company?

Some financial terms can be confusing for the non-expert. To that end if you have any doubts why not refer to our helpful Financial Details Document (PDF, 66K).

What is a CCJ?

A CCJ is a County Court Judgement where someone has taken a company or director to court for the non-payment of a debt. Viewing the CCJ record can be a useful tool in order to help gauge the creditworthiness and history of an organisation or individual.

What is in a Creditsafe Directors report?

A Creditsafe Director report contains details of a Director’s date of birth, address and all past and current directorships that they hold. You can therefore see what businesses an individual is involved with.

Can I see a sample of a report before I buy one?

You can download a sample report as a PDF so you can see the high quality of the data we provide.

Sample limited company report (PDF, 126K)

Sample non-limited company report (PDF, 60K)

Sample Director report (PDF, 33K)

Will the company I’ve taken a report on know that I’ve checked them?

No there is no legal requirement for a company to be notified when a credit report is taken out.

How do I buy a Creditsafe Company Credit report or Director Report?

Just go to one of our 'Company Reports' or 'Director Reports' pages and enter the company’s name in the search box. You will then see the details of all the companies who meet that search criteria, you can then select the company that you are interested in and put it in your shopping basket. Our simple and secure checkout procedure will ask you to enter your details and payment details. You can then simply download the Company Credit report as a PDF document.

I’ve purchased a report but when I click on it I can’t see anything?

Creditsafe Credit reports are displayed as PDF files and will open in a new window when the link is clicked on. If you have a pop-up blocker installed it will prevent you seeing the report. If this is the case, just click on the pop-up blocker bar that will appear at the top of the page and allow pop-ups from this site in order to view your report.

How do I set up an account for making online purchases?

When you enter your details at the checkout you can set up an account by entering your details and saving them along with a password. By having an account you can avoid having to enter your details each time you make a purchase (although we will not store your payment details). By having an account you can also check your order history and records at any time.

Do you sell packages?

At the moment we offer a simple pay as you go solution with a great value price for all our reports. In order to keep our pricing transparent we don’t offer a package discount. You can order as many report as you wish at any one time. If you are likely to be a heavy user of Creditsafe Company Credit Reports you may benefit from becoming a subscription customer and buying one of our freedom packages which offer unlimited access to the Creditsafe service. If you are interested in becoming a subscription customer please visit our Subscriber Customers page.

What other services do you provide?

Creditsafe’s main business is the provision of online company credit reports, usually through our subscription service. Subscription customers can also purchase our other services including our monitoring, media monitoring and business prospecting tools.

How can I contact you?

If you have a query please contact us by emailing us on shopinfo@creditsafe.com

Who are Creditsafe?

Creditsafe are Europe’s leading provider of online Company credit information with over 50 000 customers and Five Creditsafe Group reports downloaded every second. A child of the internet revolution Creditsafe has changed the way in which businesses use credit information. The company originated in Norway in 1997 and now has operations in the UK, Sweden, France, Ireland and the Netherlands.

Registered name: Creditsafe UK Ltd

Company number: 03836192

Registered Address:

Bryn House

Caerphilly Business

Park Van Road

Caerphilly

CF83 3GG

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