Company accounts – what do yours say to others?

Your records are not just there to take up space in files, they are records of your business reputation. When you look at a company’s accounts, you can get a good sense of how they function as a business.

Whether it’s how well they are doing financially, how much they have in cash reserves or profits or whether they have any outstanding County Court Judgments – a company search can yield a lot of valuable insight.

So, how do your company accounts measure up? When you do your next company search, ask yourself what your own business details say about your reputation. Let’s explore in a bit more detail.

What Can You Actually See With A Company Search?

Well, the short answer is – a lot. There are numerous types of report you can get, with some being fairly short and others being much longer and featuring more detail. Basically, if you’ve got information held with the official registrar of UK companies, Companies House, you will have access to that information.

This is because there are plenty of rules on transparency, and it helps competition between bigger and smaller companies. The information you can see includes the following:

• Financial – A lot of financial information made available through a company search. This includes things like tax but also other areas of your finances, including reported profit and loss. Also, credit ratings and limits are viewable (free company accounts UK are often available)
• Legal – County Court Judgments were mentioned into the introduction, but there are many other legal things that are put into a company report. This also includes company information like a registered office address, incorporation date and company type.
• Secretarial – This refers to things like company structure, directors and secretaries. All of this is viewable in a company report and gives the person searching the possibility of finding valuable information on the official structure of a company

There is a lot of information kept on the Companies House database, this is freely accessible and is presented in a concise way using the company search service. There are many insights you can gain from such a search. We shall now explore some of them in a bit more detail.

What Can You Actually Learn With A Company Search?

There are numerous insights that can be gleaned from a company search. These range from the very general to the very specific. Depending on your needs, you might find certain aspects more pertinent than others. It’s also worth noting that someone doing a search on your own company will be able to glean this insights too.

So, think about how the information portrays your company to others. This might include the following:

• Monetary – The insights you can get from monetary information are quite valuable. If a potential partner is checking your credit rating and finds it’s particularly low, they may think twice about doing business with you.
• Informational – In the information age, information is king. This is obvious. But someone looking at your company will find all of the information on your company structure, meaning they may be able to contact you or interact with your business more easily.
• Timeliness – With Company Search MadeSimple someone can use a company tracker to receive alerts when there is a change in information. This might be useful, but think about how your latest accounts might look to others – as they might choose to see the details as soon as they are filed.

The things you can learn from a company search are immensely varied, but there are numerous benefits to the searcher.

Making Your Company Accounts An Ad For Good Business

You might be slightly worried about what your report says about you, so do a company search now and see what you think. Try to look at it from the point of view of a potential investor. Remember that these details should not be a source of worry, they should be a wonderful ad for your business that make people want to do business with you.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to check out the rest of our blog (for free company accounts information), especially relevant to this post would be the ‘Company Accounts’ section.

By Alex Novakovic at MadeSimple – Follow Alex on Google+