What's inside a company credit report? - Creditsafe Quick Start Guide

Chapter 1

Company Credit Report Overview

Our company credit reports give you instant access to scores and limits online, allowing you to make quick and informed decisions about potential customers and suppliers before you extend them credit.

Inside the company report you will see a summary page of all the information on the company, including the company credit score, credit limit and Days Beyond Terms (DBT), which can all be found at the top of the page.

Using the tabs at the top of the report you can find more in depth information on each category:

Company Credit Report - Quick overview

Chapter 1

Director and Shareholder details

In order to gain a better insight into how a company operates, you need to know more about the people running the business, including their history. Director and shareholder information can give you an insight into the management and ownership structure of the business as well as listing any of the UK director’s current and previous companies, including failed ones from the past.

Broaden your due diligence

While credit checking a new customer, you may find that the company in question is a start-up with very little credit to its name to date. By analysing its directors, you could establish that the subject is headed up by a director with a wide portfolio of successful businesses under their belt.

Prospecting

Finding out who the director of a company you wish to reach can also give you a direct line to the key decision maker - a highly valuable insight for anyone working in sales or business development.

Explore past and current appointments

Easily explore individual appointments with official business name and trading status information, position held (director or secretary), date of appointment and resignation, as well as previous activity information.

60% of UK directors were once the director of a company that is no longer trading.

Chapter 1

Financial information

It pays to understand how a company is performing and company financials enable you to identify any detrimental trends in cashflow. All limited companies registered with Companies House are required to submit accounts on an annual basis. These annual filings can tell you how the company performed in the previous 12 month picture and helps to understand any risks associated with a company.

Explore full 5 year financials

Understand a company's performance with 5 years worth of full account information including cashflow, profit and loss, and balance sheets. By analysing the most recent financial data alongside real-time factors such as a company’s credit score, you can have an insight into a company’s predicted performance over the next 12 month period.

Understand past and present activity

Compare and contrast current performances against historical performances with easy-to-navigate current and historic financials. By monitoring the financial status of companies you already work with, such as customers or suppliers, ensures you’re better informed of their ability to fulfil their financial obligations to you.

Chapter 1

Payment performance

As companies file their accounts with Companies House annually, the payment behaviour of a company is a strong indicator of their current financial situation. Our payment performance information analyses data on 297 million companies and portrays a true insight on how businesses from across the globe pay their invoices.

Identify your quickest and slowest payers

Understanding your customer’s payment patterns can be crucial for your business and can help with managing cashflow. Compare how you’re being paid against other companies and identify the customers in your portfolio who might be experiencing cashflow problems and help protect your business from bad debt.

Spot which of your customers are experiencing cashflow problems

See payment trends of your customers, by looking at how many ‘Days Beyond Terms’ (DBT) it takes them to pay their invoices. Using this data, you can identify the number of trading experiences over the last 12 months with the DBT trend based on information provided in the last month.

If medium sized businesses pays on average 50% of their bills late, they are statistically proven to be 4 times more likely to become insolvent.

Chapter 1

Additional help and support

Our online Help Hub is home to our product user guides, FAQs and video overviews so that you always have immediate access to product information when you need it.

Follow these step-by-step instructions on how to start monitoring your customers, suppliers and competitors with Creditsafe.

You can also submit a question to our Customer Support team via our Help Hub. The majority of our queries are resolved on the very same day.

Alternatively, why not reach out to your Account Manager for additional support and advice, or schedule a personalised training session with our dedicated Training team.