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Adding your company

One number, and the public record fills itself in.
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Section
Getting started
Length
3 minute read

Adding a company takes one field, the Companies House number. snapdue then reads the free public register and fills in everything it publishes. What it does not do is give you the checklist, and that separation is on purpose.

What you need to add a company

You need the company number, which is the eight character code Companies House gave the company when it was incorporated. It is on your certificate of incorporation, on the bottom of most letters from your accountant, and on the public register if you search the company name.

It is eight characters, not always eight digits. English and Welsh companies are usually all numbers, often with leading zeros that matter. Scottish numbers start SC and Northern Irish ones start NI. Type it exactly as it appears.

Choose Add company from your dashboard, type the number, and submit. The company appears in your list.

What happens when you add it

snapdue fetches the public record and stores a copy so the pages load quickly and so a buyer can see what the register said on a given day. That copy refreshes rather than going stale.

  • The registered details, being the legal name, the registered office, the incorporation date, the trading classification and whether the company is active
  • The officers, being current and former directors and secretaries, and the people with significant control
  • The filing history, with a link to each filed document
  • Any charges, meaning security a lender or a supplier holds over the assets
  • Any insolvency history, if there is one

None of that is private and none of it is yours alone. It is the free public register, and the article on what Companies House holds explains what that means for you.

Adding is not claiming

Adding a company does not make it yours. At that moment snapdue has no evidence at all that you are connected to it, so everybody who adds a company starts as a follower with access to the public register record and nothing more.

The due diligence checklist stays closed until you claim the company. That is a separate step and it is described in the article on claiming your company.

This surprises people, and it is deliberate. If adding a company by number opened its checklist, anyone could type your number and read your pack.

When the number does not find anything

A company incorporated in the last few days may not be on the register yet. Give it a day.

A dissolved company still appears, with its status shown as dissolved. That is correct rather than a fault.

If a company genuinely has no Companies House record, for example a sole trader business or a partnership, snapdue can still hold a checklist for it, but the sections that read the register will say they cannot start yet, because there is nothing behind them.