Losing a customer is a sales problem. Losing a customer who owes you money is a survival problem, and the two arrive in the wrong order: the invoice goes unpaid before anybody tells you anything is wrong.
Some public records can prompt a closer look at a customer, but many payment problems appear without useful advance notice. Combine the record with your own payment experience.
The sequence, and where you can actually see it
There is no fixed sequence of filings that predicts failure. Late accounts, changes in security and court notices have different meanings and need to be checked in context.
Monitoring can help you notice changes and review outstanding balances. It cannot guarantee that you will avoid bad debt.
Read the Gazette notice promptly
A winding-up petition has to be advertised in the Gazette, and the timing is fixed by the process. It runs no less than seven business days after the petition was served on the company, and no less than seven business days before the court hearing.
An advertised petition can affect the company's banking arrangements. Check the notice and hearing date promptly, and seek appropriate advice on outstanding invoices or further supply. A petition does not establish that a winding-up order will follow.
A Gazette notice is a reason to review the account promptly. Check the process and your contractual position before deciding how to handle further orders.
The signals that arrive early enough to act on
These are the ones worth building a habit around, in roughly the order they become meaningful.
Accounts filed late, or filed as the minimum
A company that files on the deadline every year and then files late has changed something. A company that moves from fuller accounts to the smallest permitted set has also changed something. Neither proves distress. Both are worth noticing, because they cost nothing to notice.
A new charge over the whole undertaking
A charge records security over the assets described in the document. It does not establish the purpose of the borrowing or the company's ability to pay suppliers.
Directors resigning without replacement
A resignation can be routine or significant. Look at the role, replacements and other recent information before drawing conclusions about the company's finances.
County court judgments
A judgment records a court decision. Check the parties and status before using it in a credit review; it does not explain all the circumstances behind the debt.
The trading signals nobody files
Round-sum payments instead of settled invoices. Payment runs that slip from the 15th to the 20th and then to whenever. Someone new handling accounts payable who does not know your account. A request to increase your credit limit shortly after a slow payment. None of these is on any register and all of them are earlier than everything that is.
Reading a set of small company accounts for strain
Small company accounts are thin, and there is still enough in them if you know which movements matter together.
Net current liabilities mean current liabilities exceed current assets at the reporting date. That can prompt questions about liquidity, but it does not establish expected receipts or prove an inability to pay. Compare the notes and recent payment experience.
Accounts are old by the time you see them, so they tell you about direction rather than about today. Use them to decide how much attention a customer deserves, and use the faster signals to decide when to act.
What to do at each stage
The response should be proportionate, because overreacting to a single weak signal costs you a customer who was fine.
Start by checking the event and your outstanding balance. Ask about payment timing where concerns arise. Any change to credit limits or future supply needs to reflect the facts and your contractual obligations.
On a petition notice, review further credit urgently and seek advice on your position. Do not assume every petition leads to liquidation or that banking arrangements are identical in every case.
Two things worth having in place before any of this
Retention of title clauses only help if they were in your terms before the order, and they are worth taking advice on because they have to be drafted and applied properly to survive an insolvency. Credit insurance is worth pricing if a single customer represents a large share of your ledger.
Concentration is the underlying risk that makes all of this urgent. A supplier whose largest customer is a fifth of turnover has a business problem if that customer fails. A supplier whose largest customer is half of turnover has an existential one, and no amount of monitoring changes that arithmetic.
The formal steps, and how much notice each one gives you
Once a company enters a formal process the steps are published on a statutory clock, and knowing the clock tells you how much time you have.
A notice of intention to appoint an administrator can affect creditors' enforcement rights. Check the filing and applicable time limits promptly. It does not guarantee that an administrator will be appointed at the end of a fixed period.
A winding-up petition has its own notice requirements and hearing date. Read the published notice and seek advice on the implications for your invoices. The advertisement is not a winding-up order.
A proposed voluntary strike-off should prompt a check of any unpaid balance. Creditors can object through the applicable procedure. Read the notice and act within the stated process rather than assuming the debt will be recovered automatically.
So the practical rule is that a Gazette notice about a customer is never something to read next week. Each of these has a window measured in weeks and the window is the whole value of the notice.
The filings that arrive before any of that
Two ordinary Companies House events are worth more than most credit alerts because they arrive earlier and cost nothing.
Late accounts give you a reason to check what happened. Administrative delays and financial problems are both possible, and the filing status alone cannot distinguish them.
The second is a new charge. A charge over a company's assets has to be registered at Companies House within twenty-one days of creation, so the register shows you both what was secured and roughly when. A new charge is not automatically bad, since growing companies borrow to grow. A new charge from an invoice financier, or a second charge added to an existing one, or a charge granted shortly after a late filing, is a different picture. Read it alongside what else has happened rather than on its own.
These filings are free to follow. Their timing relative to financial difficulty varies, so use them to prompt questions rather than predict a failure date.
What is not a signal
A company changing its registered office is usually a change of accountant. A company changing its accounting reference date is usually tax planning or a group alignment. A dormant subsidiary in a group filing dormant accounts is doing what dormant companies do.
Reading distress into ordinary administrative filings is how firms damage good relationships. The point of watching the record is to notice the combinations that matter, and combinations are what the ordinary events are not.
Making it a habit rather than a panic
Nobody checks the register on forty customers every week. What works is a tiered approach. Rank your ledger by exposure. The customers who could hurt you get watched continuously. The next tier gets checked when something changes in how they pay. The long tail gets checked at the point you extend credit and not again unless something happens.
Review the process against the value outstanding and your payment experience. Give the most attention to accounts whose loss would materially affect the business.