For businesses
What we hold about your company
Everything in a SafeToPay report comes from named public sources — the company register, domain records, web archives, review platforms and your own website. We hold no private information about any business, we add no opinions, and every line in a report says where it came from. This page lists each source, what we take from it, and how to change it at source.
Every source, section by section
| Report section | Source | What we take | To change it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who you’re paying | Companies House (Open Government Licence v3.0) | Legal name, number, status, incorporation date, registered office, SIC codes, previous names, accounts as filed, officers, persons with significant control, Gazette notices | File the change at Companies House; the report follows the register |
| Financials | Your filed accounts (iXBRL / PDF at Companies House) | Net assets, cash, employees, and for full accounts turnover and profit, exactly as filed | File newer accounts; we always show the latest filed |
| VAT | HMRC VAT checker | Whether a VAT number you display is valid and whose it is | HMRC |
| Website vs register | Your own website | Claims you publish (years, workshop, team, guarantees), quoted verbatim with the page they came from; contact details; company number if displayed | Edit your website; the next check re-reads it |
| Domain | Nominet / RDAP | Registration and update dates; registrant organisation where published | Your registrar (individual registrants are redacted by the registries) |
| History | Internet Archive | First capture date, months with captures, whether past captures show the same business | web.archive.org (exclusion requests go to the Archive, not us) |
| Reputation | Google Business Profile | Rating, review count, profile address and the website it links to | Your Google Business Profile |
| Trade schemes | The scheme’s own register (Gas Safe, NICEIC, FENSA, TrustMark, MCS…) | Whether a badge you display matches a live registration | The scheme operator |
If a source is unavailable when a check runs, the report says “not checked yet” for that line — a gap in our data is never presented as a mark against you.
Directors and owners: the personal data
The only personal data in reports is what Companies House publishes about directors and persons with significant control — names, roles, dates, other appointments and service addresses — published by law (Companies Act 2006) so that the public can see who controls companies. We reproduce it under legitimate interests, we do not add private information, we do not show residential addresses beyond the register’s service address, and we do not profile individuals. Details, retention and your rights: privacy notice, section 3. If the register shows you wrongly, correct it at Companies House; if we show the register wrongly, tell us and it is fixed within 48 hours.
What we store, and for how long
- Report data (the snapshot of the sources above at the time of a check): 12 months from the check, then deleted or anonymised into aggregate statistics.
- Your website’s text: only the extracts needed to quote claims, stored with the report, same 12 months.
- Business responses and corrections: for as long as the report they attach to, plus our correspondence for 2 years.
- Nothing else. No tracking of your business, no monitoring beyond re-checks users run or subscribe to, no data purchased from brokers.
Getting a copy, or asking questions
Email corrections@safetopay.co.uk from your company domain for anything about your company’s report, or privacy@safetopay.co.uk for personal-data requests (directors’ rights under UK GDPR). We answer within one month, usually much faster.
Frequently asked questions
Do you sell or share our data?
No. Reports are shown to the person who runs the check; we do not sell data, share checker identities with businesses, or supply lists to marketers. Aggregate, anonymised statistics (e.g. “X% of trade websites state a company number”) may appear in our research.
Can we opt out of being checked?
No — a report is a presentation of public records any customer could read themselves, and its value depends on covering every business a consumer asks about. What you can do: correct errors (48 hours), add a business response, and make the record itself strong.
Do you notify us when someone checks our company?
No. Checks are private to the person running them, as your own searches would be.
Where does the verdict come from?
From published rules applied to the facts above — no human opinion, no adjustable score. The rules, weights and thresholds are on the methodology page.
You quoted our website. Is that allowed?
Yes — short verbatim quotes of public claims, with the source page named, for the purpose of comparing them with the public record. It is the same thing a careful customer does by hand.