For subcontractors
Will your customer actually pay you? Check them before you pick up a tool
You're a subcontractor. You turn up, you do the work, and half the time you're on site for a main contractor or a customer you've never dealt with before, all on credit and all on trust. The scary bit is you don't get paid until the job's done, and by then it's too late to find out they were never good for the money.
Free verdict / no card / they are never told you looked
Why it happens
Subbies get burned in a few ways and they all sting. You finish the job, send the final invoice, and it just goes quiet. Or the main contractor above you folds partway through the build and takes your money down with them, because you're near the bottom of the queue when the receivers turn up. Or you're asked to hold off on payment until the next valuation and that valuation never comes. Sometimes it's a customer who takes your deposit for materials and vanishes, or a director who's already walked away from a pile of unpaid trades under an old company name and is now doing the exact same thing under a new one. None of that shows up when you shake hands on site. It shows up on the public record, if you know where to look before you start.
How to check a customer before you start the job
- Put their company name in and look at whether they're actually trading fine or quietly heading for the wall. A winding-up notice, a proposal to strike off, or an insolvency filing means walk away, no matter how good the job sounds.
- Check their accounts aren't overdue. A company that can't be bothered to file its accounts on time is often a company that can't be bothered to pay you on time either.
- Look at the directors, not just the company. If the person you're dealing with has folded companies before and left debts behind, that's the phoenix pattern, and you could be the next trade left holding an unpaid invoice.
- For a main contractor above you, run the same checks on them. If they go under, your money goes with them, so it's worth two minutes to see how solid they really are before you agree to work on credit.
Check a company free right now and get your traffic-light verdict before you quote
Check a company →Questions subcontractors ask
Can I check a customer before I even quote?
Yes, and you should. You don't need their permission and you don't need to have started the job. Pop the company name in before you price the work, so you already know whether they're safe to work for on credit. If the verdict comes back AVOID, you can price for cash up front or walk away before you've spent a penny on materials.
What if they're a sole trader, not a limited company?
Then there won't be a company record to check, because a sole trader is just a person trading under their own name. Our checks are built on Companies House and insolvency data, so they work best for limited companies and main contractors. For a sole trader, protect yourself the old-fashioned way: get a deposit up front, invoice in stages, and don't let the debt run up on a big job for someone you don't know.
Will they know I checked them?
No. Everything we use is public record data that anyone can look at, and nothing gets sent to the company you check. They won't get a notification, they won't see your name, and there's no way for them to know you ran a check. It's just you doing your homework before you commit to the work.
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