Identity
A verified UK company number bound to the prospect — or an honest miss / ambiguity.
Data source
Companies House
Public UK registry evidence — legal identity, company status, accounts disclosure, and statutory financial lines when filings allow.
23 detectable patterns across identity, filings, and statutory accounts
- Identity
- Filings
- Statutory numbers
Identity is a gate. Depth is prioritization.
Depth
Whether accounts filings exist, how rich disclosure looks, and which statutory lines we could parse.
How Companies House evidence stacks
Three rungs — bind the entity, judge disclosure, then read numbers only when they’re likely to exist.
1
Identity Verified UK company
2
Filings Disclosure gate
3
Statutory numbers Parsed lines when present
- Always useful Entity bind + registry status — cheap and decisive.
- Disclosure filter Skip dead-end micro filings before a deep document pull.
- Magnitudes when earned Turnover, employees, and balance-sheet lines only when parse succeeds.
Entity & registry status
Can we safely bind a UK Companies House identity — and what does the register say about it?
Identity footprint
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Verified
Safe UK company number bound to the prospect.
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Not found
No safe UK bind — not “illegitimate worldwide.”
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Ambiguous
Candidates exist; none safe to bind.
Registry status
Meaningful once an entity is verified.
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Active
Register shows active — registry state only.
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Dissolved
Closed-class status — confirm before treating as trading.
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Insolvency
Insolvency-class status on the register.
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Other / unclear
Non-canonical or missing status — inspect before hard gates.
Filing clock
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Accounts overdue
Next accounts marked overdue on the profile — filing clock, not insolvency.
Incorporation age and SIC footprint can attach to a verified entity for filters — we don’t invent “startup / mature” bands on this page.
Filings & disclosure
Two questions we ask of the filing
- Do they legally exist here? Registry identity and status language — a UK company on the register, not a credit score.
- Is there distress language in the filing? Going-concern notes, winding-up, overdue accounts as language in the document — not a new distress card wall.
No filing in this pass is unknown — not that the company is empty.
Filing footprint
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Accounts filing found
Latest accounts filing with document metadata selected.
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None found
No selectable accounts document under current filters.
Disclosure class
How rich the selected accounts filing looks — before any numbers are parsed.
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Rich disclosure
Outside the low-disclosure set — magnitudes may be worth parsing.
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Low disclosure
Micro / dormant-style class — P&L often absent.
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Unknown
Type unclassified — don’t assume richness.
Source quality
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Paper-filed
Digital extract less likely; OCR/PDF paths may fail closed.
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Amended
Amended accounts may supersede an earlier filing for the period.
Filing found ≠ turnover known. Disclosure class decides whether a document pull is worth it.
Statutory numbers
When disclosure allows, we parse the accounts document into statutory observations — and we say clearly when numbers weren’t available.
Parse outcomes
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Financials observed
At least one numeric line parsed from the selected accounts.
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Low-disclosure skipped
Filing class skipped before document fetch — saves a dead pull.
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No filing
No selectable accounts document to parse.
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Document unavailable
Filing meta existed; document content couldn’t be retrieved.
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Parse empty
Document obtained; no numeric fields extracted (common on paper/PDF).
Headline lines
Only meaningful when financials were observed.
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Turnover disclosed
Revenue line present — not profitability or buying power.
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Employees disclosed
Statutory average employees — not live headcount confirmation.
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Net assets disclosed
Equity / net assets observation — balance sheet only.
Other statutory lines attach as magnitudes when present — we don’t invent size bands from them.
- Cash
- Gross profit
- Profit before tax
- Inventories
- Debtors
- Creditors (≤1yr)
- Tangible fixed assets
- Total fixed assets
- Total assets
What it looks like in a verified fit
Northbridge Instruments Ltd
- UK entity verified This week2
Companies House identity bound; register status active.
Legal UK footprint confirmed before deeper pulls.
- Rich accounts disclosure This week2.1
Latest accounts filing class sits outside the low-disclosure set.
Worth reading numbers — not a micro-entity dead-end.
- Turnover disclosed This week1.9 2.3
Statutory turnover present on the parsed accounts extract.
Scale grounded in public filings, not a directory guess.
Boundaries & method
- UK Companies House only — absence is not “no legal entity worldwide.”
- Registry status is not commercial activity or buying intent.
- Accounts overdue is profile filing metadata — not an insolvency verdict.
- Filing metadata is not parsed financials; magnitudes require a successful document parse.
- Low-disclosure classes often omit P&L/turnover; we may skip the document pull on purpose.
- Paper-filed / PDF text paths can yield “document obtained, numbers unavailable” — we fail closed.
- Statutory averages and GBP lines are observations — not credit scores or “can they afford us.”
- Officers, parent-group escalation, and keyword narrative stay in deeper research — this guide covers the public-register ladder.