UK supplier due diligence – the 12-point checklist

Most UK businesses run some form of supplier check on onboarding. Almost none document what the check actually is. The result: a compliance process that looks like a policy but behaves like a rubber stamp – finance waits on a "supplier form," ticks that it has an entry in the accounts system, and releases payment.

This checklist is what proper supplier due diligence looks like. It's not a procurement framework – it's the concrete data points someone should eyeball before you authorise the first invoice. Run them in order. Anything in the "red" column is a stop-and-ask, not an automatic reject.

Before you start

You need three things from the supplier before you can verify anything:

1. Registered company name (the legal name, not a trading name)
2. Companies House number (see the lookup guide if they can't produce one)
3. Bank details for payment

That's it. Everything else – accounts, directors, PSC register, VAT number, filing history – is public and can be pulled from Companies House.

The 12-point checklist

Identity

1. Does the registered name match the name on the quote? Compare the name on the quote, contract and invoice against the registered name on Companies House. Exact match, including suffix (Ltd vs Limited, plc, LLP). A mismatch is usually a typo, sometimes a trading name – and occasionally a deliberate attempt to impersonate a real entity.

2. Is the company number valid and active? The number must resolve on Companies House. Status must be Active. Anything else – Dormant, Proposal to Strike Off, In Liquidation – means you do not transact without a written explanation and sign-off from a decision-maker on your side.

3. Is the company registered in the country the quote claims? A "UK supplier" with an IE (Ireland) or offshore registered office is a cross-border transaction with different VAT, payment and jurisdictional implications. Worth knowing up front.

Operational reality

4. How old is the company? Incorporation date is on the overview page. Companies under 12 months old aren't necessarily a problem, but the risk profile is different – no accounts filed yet, no trading track record, fewer ways to verify. Match your payment terms to the evidence (net-7 instead of net-30, smaller initial orders).

5. Has it filed accounts? Look at the filing history. Is there at least one set of annual accounts (type AA)? If yes, do they show trading activity consistent with the scale of business the supplier claims? If the supplier says they'll deliver £500k of goods this year and their last filed accounts show a micro-entity balance sheet with £3k of assets, something is wrong.

6. Is the confirmation statement up to date? The CS01 is an annual filing. An overdue confirmation statement means Companies House is already sending warning letters – the company is one step from proposal-to-strike-off.

7. Any adverse filings in the last two years? On the filing history tab, look for:

• GAZ1 / GAZ2 – gazette notices of proposed or final strike-off
• DISS40 / DISS16 – dissolution notices
• LIQ series – liquidation filings
• SAIL / SLOC – change of registered office (worth checking – not disqualifying, but a serial address-hopping pattern is worth noting)

None of these are automatic rejects. A company that rescued itself from a GAZ1 proposal is often a stronger counterparty than one that never filed late. But you want to see the pattern, ask about it, and get a reasonable answer.

People

8. Who are the current directors? The officers tab lists every director. For each one, check:

• How many other appointments they hold
• How many of those are dissolved, struck off or in liquidation
• Any disqualification history (shown on the officer page)

One director with thirty resigned appointments at dissolved companies is the clearest single signal of the recurring incorporation pattern. You don't need a compliance team to spot it – the data is all there in plain text.

9. Who are the PSCs (people with significant control)? PSCs are the humans (or entities) that ultimately own more than 25% of the company. For a reputable supplier, the PSCs should match what they've told you in onboarding. If a supplier says "we're owned by our founder, Jane" and the PSC register shows a Cyprus holding company with no ultimate beneficial owner declared, you have grounds for a conversation.

10. Is anyone disqualified? The Insolvency Service maintains a public register of disqualified directors. A disqualified director cannot, by law, be involved in the formation, management or promotion of a UK company. A currently-disqualified director acting as a de facto director of your supplier is a legal problem that will land on you as well as them.

Financial signals

11. Balance sheet health For small companies, filed accounts are abbreviated, but the balance sheet is always present. The basics:

• Net assets – is the company solvent?
• Cash – does it have working capital?
• Debtors – is a lot of the asset base tied up in unpaid invoices?
• Creditors falling due within one year – does the supplier owe more than it owns?

If net assets are negative ("technically insolvent"), proceed only with payment terms that reflect the risk. Net assets negative for multiple consecutive years is a company being propped up by its directors – not necessarily failing, but not healthy.

12. Any CCJs? County Court Judgments for unpaid debts are public record. A supplier with multiple unsatisfied CCJs is one that doesn't pay people. The pattern matters more than any single CCJ – one disputed judgment is unfortunate, eight unsatisfied judgments over two years is a bad payer.

How to run this in under five minutes

Steps 1 – 12, done properly on Companies House, take a diligent person 30 – 60 minutes per supplier. B2Verify collapses the data fetches into a single lookup.

For every UK company in the B2Verify directory, you get:

• Identity, status, incorporation date, country of registration (points 1 – 3)
• Last accounts, confirmation statement, adverse filings (points 5 – 7)
• Full officer list with appointment history across every company each director has run (points 8 – 10)
• Balance-sheet health signals in the Trust Score breakdown (points 11 – 12)
• An overall Trust Score (0 – 100, with Low / Medium / High risk banding) that aggregates the signals into one number with the reasons behind it

If the supplier ends up on your approved list, add them to your B2Verify monitored list – you get an email the moment anything on the register changes: a new director, a strike-off proposal, a change of registered office, an overdue filing.

What a complete supplier file looks like

For your own records, each approved supplier file should contain:

1. Supplier name + Companies House number
2. The Trust Score (or equivalent) at the time of onboarding
3. A dated screenshot or export of the overview page as at the date of approval
4. The last filed accounts
5. A record of who approved the supplier and on what basis
6. Bank details verified separately from the invoice (ideally by phone call to a number on the company's official website, not the one on the invoice)

Number 6 catches the most common payment-redirection pattern we see: a real supplier, a real invoice, but the bank details on it have been substituted by an intercepted email. Verifying the bank account independently – not against a number on the invoice itself – is the single highest-leverage control you can add.

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Onboarding a supplier this week? Look them up on B2Verify – you'll have all 12 checks in one view, and can add them to your monitored list so you know the moment anything changes.