How to check a company before you pay a deposit
About to pay a deposit to a company you don't know? The 5-minute check that could save it.
A deposit is the moment you're most exposed
When you pay a deposit to a company you've never dealt with, you're handing over money before you've received anything, and if that company is in trouble, or was never quite what it seemed, the deposit is often the first thing you lose. It doesn't need to be a scam. A perfectly real business that's quietly heading for insolvency will still take your deposit, and you'll join the queue of creditors when it folds. The good news: almost everything you need to sanity-check a UK company is in free public records, and you can run the check in about five minutes before the money leaves your account.
The five-minute deposit check
1. Get the company number, not just the trading name (30 seconds). Ask for, or find, the eight-digit Companies House number and the exact registered name. "Dave's Kitchens" is a trading name and tells you nothing; the company behind it might be "DK INSTALLATIONS LTD". If a business taking your deposit won't give a company number, that alone is worth pausing over, they may be a sole trader (legitimate, but a different risk), or they may prefer not to be looked up.
2. Check it's active and how old it is (1 minute). Confirm the status is "Active", not "Dissolved", "In liquidation" or "Proposed to be struck off". Then look at the incorporation date. A company formed a month ago asking for a large deposit deserves far more caution than one trading steadily for years. New plus large deposit plus "pay quickly to secure the slot" is a pattern worth slowing down for.
3. Are the accounts up to date? (1 minute). Every company files accounts annually. If the latest accounts are overdue, that's one of the most reliable early signs of a business in trouble or one that's stopped being run properly, exactly the kind you don't want holding your deposit. It's not proof of anything, but it moves the dial from "normal terms" to "protect yourself".
4. Any insolvency or strike-off notices? (1 minute). Search the company in The Gazette, the UK's official public record, for winding-up petitions, administrations or liquidation notices, and check the Insolvency Register. A live winding-up petition means other creditors are already trying to close the company down; your deposit would be at serious risk. This is a hard stop, not a caution.
5. Do the people and the address add up? (1 minute). Glance at who runs it and whether the registered address matches the website and invoice. A polished website fronting a brand-new company registered at a shared mailbox in another city is worth a question before you pay.
How to pay the deposit, whatever you find
Sizing your exposure matters as much as the check itself. If everything's clean, a deposit on normal terms is reasonable, but still pay by credit or debit card where you can, not bank transfer: cards give you chargeback rights, and on purchases over £100 a credit card adds Section 75 protection, so you're not relying on the company's goodwill if things go wrong. If you saw mild flags, keep the deposit as small as the supplier will accept, tie payments to delivery milestones, and get everything in writing. If you saw a hard flag, a winding-up petition, a company in liquidation, or a director banned from running companies, don't pay a deposit at all; ask for goods or work on completion, or walk away.
None of this is legal or financial advice, it's what the public record shows, read sensibly. But five minutes before a deposit catches the great majority of the situations you'd later regret.
Do the whole check in one search
Running all five checks by hand across Companies House, The Gazette and the insolvency registers works, but it's a lot of tabs while a supplier is waiting for your answer. TradeChecker pulls the same free official data into one plain-English verdict, safe, caution or avoid, with the reasons. Before you pay that deposit, check the company free, it takes seconds.
About to pay a deposit? Check the company on the public record first.
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