Business credit check

A business credit check provides a valuable insight into the financial position of a potential customer and their ability, or perhaps willingness, to pay your invoices on time. The business credit check tells you how much risk is involved in offering a line of credit and what the terms associated with that credit should be to protect your business from bad debt.

Particularly in commercially difficult times, a business credit check can prevent you from making poor financial decisions when faced with the prospect of lucrative sales, instead adopting a more measured approach that protects your business.

Top Service is the number one construction industry credit reference agency, and provides the most comprehensive business credit checks for construction businesses.

What makes us unique is our trading experiences, which we include in our credit reports. These tell you how well a potential customer pays their suppliers, which will give you a good insight as to how well they will pay you.

You can find out about our thorough business credit checks and becoming a member in the Top Service community later on in the article.

Why should you use a business credit check?

By providing valuable financial information about companies you’re keen to work with, business credit checks help your cashflow and minimises the potential of bad debt.

A business credit check helps you to assess the financial position of a company by:

• Providing a credit risk score from 1 to 100. The lower the credit score, the higher the risk.
• Suggesting credit limits and terms
• Detailing key financial data from the last three years of filed accounts
• Giving you director and shareholder details
• Revealing any county court judgements
• Outlining group company information

You can also find out key financial data including turnover, pre-tax profits, total assets and liabilities, tangible net worth and working capital.

All of this information allows you to make informed decisions about how to proceed with a new customer; decisions that protect your bottom line.

We are a specialist credit reference agency for the construction sector

Top Service is a specialist credit reference agency that has been specialising in credit reference services for the construction sector for over thirty years. We understand the intricacies of the construction supply chain and contractor engagement.

The unique Top Service subscription model provides construction firms with unparalleled access to crucial financial information on any limited company in the UK. The information we provide exposes problem payers to protect our members from bad debt.

Members’ access to credit reports is unlimited. You can check hundreds of credit reports for one subscription price. If there is no credit report available for a particular company or sole trader, we investigate the company and use our research data to create one.

We also investigate beyond a company’s most recently filed accounts as there can be a delay of more than a year from the point of the investigation, during which the company’s financial position could have deteriorated.

Check a company credit report for free with our free trial

Top Service are offering a 48 hour free trial of our services so that you can see for yourself the benefits of our company credit check, debt prevention and recovery package. Within the 48 hour period you can access as many credit checks as you wish.

The trial is a snapshot of the full suite of services we provide which include access to a helpdesk team, payment chasing, debt recovery services, company and director monitoring and emergency updates.

To access the trial you just need to complete the online form. You will be provided with a login, and your trial begins as soon as you use that login for the first time.

There is no obligation to continue with a subscription once the 48 hours have elapsed, there are no catches and a signature is not required. We simply want to demonstrate our expertise in the construction sector and the potential benefits to you of becoming a member.

Debt prevention – our services

Top Service offer other debt prevention services alongside business credit checks.

Our innovative insider intelligence is sourced from the trading experiences of our construction trader members.

We collate members’ trading experiences of working with companies so you know if, for example, a company pays creditors slowly. Some businesses use slow payments as a cashflow strategy but this would affect your own cashflow. Trading experiences tell you if your potential customer is on stop with another supplier or if they raise a lot of disputes. Can you afford these risks?

Top Service debt prevention services also include company monitoring. We report updates such as new significant trading experiences, credit limit changes, new county court judgements, insolvency action, new accounts being filed and company name changes.

Similarly, we also monitor company directors with updates on whether a director is appointed at a new company or if they resign from a directorship elsewhere.

We can also keep track of directors who start a new company on the back of a former insolvency. Known as ‘phoenix companies’ because of the reference to rising from the ashes, they are usually set up before the original company becomes insolvent.

Phoenix companies are common in the construction sector and, whilst not illegal, dealing with one can present a significant risk to your own business.

Debt recovery – our services

Top Service offer expert recovery services to construction companies through which we collect money owed to avoid litigation.

• We can send formal reminder letters and emails which have a success rate of over 75%. Sometimes this is all it takes.
• We also offer the following ‘no collection, no fee’ debt recovery services:
  • A debt collection service for situations where you’d prefer to not take legal action.
  • Pre-litigation solicitor approved letters and telephone calls to your customer, outlining a 14 day period for payment after which legal action will be taken.
  • Retention collections to overcome the construction headache of claiming around 1.5 – 5% of a contract value held by the main contractor.

What sets us apart from other credit reference agencies?

The construction sector expertise of the Top Service team, and the innovative insider intelligence gathering service we provide, are invaluable to our members. No stone is left unturned. We offer an unrivalled customer experience because our services are tailored to the needs of our members.

Join our community of members to access more informed credit information

To join our community of Top Service members from the UK’s construction sector, you don’t need to sign a contract or commit to a minimum subscription period. Just contact us and we will do the rest.