- "Active" means the company is currently on the register as active - it does not mean it is a good prospect or financially healthy.
- "Dissolved" is a hard stop for live CRM workflows - the legal entity no longer exists and should be reviewed before remaining in an active pipeline.
- Liquidation, administration, and "proposal to strike off" are warning signals that warrant review before the record is used in outreach or enrichment.
- Company status is a public register status, not a financial, credit, or trustworthiness assessment.
Company status is the state of a legal entity on the public register - whether it is currently registered, and whether any dissolution or insolvency process has been recorded against it. It is an administrative fact about the entity’s existence. It says nothing about whether the company is trading, solvent, growing, or worth selling to.
The status you will meet most often, and the one that causes the most damage when it is ignored, is dissolved: the company has been removed from the register and no longer exists as a legal entity. It cannot trade, hold assets, sign a contract, or be sued. There is nobody left to sell to.
This guide explains what each of the common statuses means and what your pipeline should do about it, for data quality and CRM data cleaning workflows. It is not legal advice, and status alone is not a substitute for financial or commercial due diligence.
What company status tells you (and what it does not)
Company status describes the current state of the legal entity on the public register. It does not tell you:
- Whether the company is financially healthy
- Whether the company is a good prospect, customer, or partner
- Whether the company is currently trading at all
- Whether the company’s debts are manageable or overwhelming
- Whether the company is trustworthy or reputable
For those questions, you need additional sources - financial accounts, credit reference data, or direct due diligence. Company status is a single public data point, not a full picture.
What it does tell you is whether the legal entity you are dealing with is currently registered, and in what state. That is useful for data quality purposes: it helps you avoid loading dissolved entities into live pipelines, and it flags records that may need review before they are used in B2B data enrichment or outreach.
Company status reference table
Every status you will meet on the register, what it means for the entity, and what your pipeline should do about it. The CRM action column is the one to wire up - status is only useful if something happens automatically when it changes.
| Status | What has happened | Still a legal entity? | Can it still trade? | CRM action | Outreach action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active | Registered, no insolvency or striking-off process under way | Yes | Yes, though status alone does not prove it is trading | Import normally | Proceed |
| Active - proposal to strike off | A notice to dissolve the company has been published | Yes, for now | Sometimes - often dormant, occasionally an oversight | Flag for review; do not enrich further | Hold; verify before spending on outreach |
| Liquidation | A formal process to wind up and distribute assets has begun | Yes, until dissolved | Rarely, and only to complete the wind-up | Flag and freeze; stop enrichment spend | Stop - a liquidator now controls the entity |
| Administration | An administrator has taken control to attempt a rescue | Yes | Often yes, under the administrator | Flag for manual review | Case by case; the buying authority has moved |
| Receivership | A receiver has been appointed over specific assets | Yes | Often yes | Flag for manual review | Case by case; verify who has authority to buy |
| Dissolved | The entity has been removed from the register | No | No | Suppress from live pipelines; keep for history | Stop - there is no legal entity to contract with |
| Converted or closed | The entity converted to another form or was closed | No, not in this form | Not under this number | Look for the successor entity before suppressing | Re-target the successor if there is one |
Two traps worth naming. “Active” is the default state of a registered company and says nothing about whether anyone is answering the phone - dormant companies are active. And a dissolved entity can be restored to the register, so suppressing rather than deleting is the safer default.
What does it mean if a company is dissolved?
A dissolved company has been removed from the Companies House register and no longer exists as a legal entity. It cannot trade, employ anyone, hold a bank account, sign a contract, or be sued. Any property or cash it still owned at the moment of dissolution passes to the Crown as bona vacantia - ownerless goods.
That last point is what makes dissolution different from every other status on this page. Liquidation, administration, and receivership all describe a company in trouble. Dissolution describes a company that is gone. There is no counterparty left.
A company reaches dissolved status by one of three routes:
| Route | What happened | What it usually signals |
|---|---|---|
| Voluntary strike-off | The directors applied to have the company removed, usually after it stopped trading | An orderly wind-down; often a dormant shell or a closed side venture |
| Compulsory strike-off | Companies House removed it for failing to file accounts or a confirmation statement | Abandonment - nobody was minding the entity, which may or may not mean the business stopped |
| Completion of insolvency | A liquidation ran its course and the company was dissolved at the end of it | Genuine failure; creditors were paid what there was to pay |
The three are not equally informative. A voluntary strike-off often means a group tidied up a dormant subsidiary while the trading business carries on perfectly well under a different company number - so a dissolved record is a prompt to look for the successor entity, not automatic proof the customer is gone.
A dissolved company can also come back. Administrative restoration is available within six years of a strike-off, and a court can order restoration in wider circumstances. That is the practical argument for suppressing dissolved records rather than deleting them: restoration is uncommon, but a deleted record loses the history you would need to recognise it.
For data quality purposes: suppress dissolved entities from live pipelines, keep them for history, and check whether a successor entity exists before writing the account off. Use the Companies House checker to pull the incorporation and dissolution dates - a company dissolved last month is a different problem from one dissolved in 2019 and still sitting in your CRM.
What does “active” company status mean?
Active means the company is on the register and no dissolution or insolvency process has been recorded against it. That is the whole of it. Active is the default state of a registered company, not an achievement.
What active does not tell you:
| Question | Does active answer it? |
|---|---|
| Is the company trading? | No - a dormant company that has never traded shows as active |
| Is it solvent? | No - distress does not appear on the register until a formal process starts |
| Is anyone answering the phone? | No - the register has no view of operations |
| Is it filing on time? | Not directly - check the filing history and next-due dates instead |
The gap between “active” and “trading” is the one that costs money. A company in serious difficulty shows as active right up until the day an insolvency process is recorded, which can be months after it stopped paying suppliers. Status is a lagging indicator.
For data quality purposes: active is the expected state and needs no action on status alone. If you want a leading signal, look at whether accounts and confirmation statements are overdue - late filings show up well before a status change does.
What does company status “liquidation” mean?
Liquidation means a formal process to wind up the company has begun: its assets are being collected and sold, and the proceeds distributed to creditors, after which the company will be dissolved. A liquidator now controls the entity, not the directors.
The distinction people most often want here is liquidation versus dissolved. Liquidation is the process; dissolution is the destination. A company in liquidation still exists on the register and can still be contacted - it just cannot buy anything from you. A dissolved company has finished the journey and been struck off.
The status usually names the type, and the type tells you who initiated it:
| Type | Who started it | What it implies |
|---|---|---|
| Creditors’ voluntary liquidation (CVL) | The directors, when the company cannot pay its debts | Insolvency acknowledged from the inside |
| Compulsory liquidation | A creditor, via a court winding-up petition | Someone was owed enough to go to court |
| Members’ voluntary liquidation (MVL) | The shareholders, when the company can pay its debts | A solvent wind-up - often a retirement or a group restructure, not a failure |
MVL is the one worth reading carefully. It is a solvent liquidation, so the people behind it are not distressed - they may well be starting or already running another entity worth knowing about.
The process runs for months and often years, so a liquidation status can sit on a record for a long time before it becomes a dissolution.
For data quality purposes: Liquidation is a significant flag. A company in liquidation is in the process of being wound up and will eventually be dissolved. This is not a routine status. Records with a liquidation status warrant review before they are used in any active workflow. Do not assume active trading or active engagement from a company in this state.
What does it mean when a company is in administration?
Administration means an insolvency practitioner has taken control of the company to try to rescue it, or failing that, to get creditors a better outcome than liquidation would. Unlike liquidation, administration is an attempt to keep the business alive - so a company in administration is often still trading, still taking deliveries, and still answering the phone.
What changes is authority. Your usual contact no longer has spending power; the administrator does. A renewal that was agreed in principle last month may now need the administrator’s sign-off, and pre-administration invoices join the creditor queue rather than getting paid on terms.
A company in administration continues to trade in some form while the administrator works through the options. It is not dissolved - in fact, one goal of administration is often to avoid dissolution.
For data quality purposes: Administration is a serious status that warrants review. The company may still be reachable and may even continue trading, but the circumstances are unusual. Treat administration as a review flag rather than an automatic exclusion.
What does “active - proposal to strike off” mean?
It means a notice has been published in the Gazette announcing an intention to remove the company from the register. The company still exists and is still marked active, but a clock is now running: unless someone objects or the outstanding filings are made, the entity will move to dissolved.
The notice can be triggered by the directors applying to close the company, or by Companies House acting because accounts or a confirmation statement are overdue. The second case is the interesting one for revenue teams - a busy, solvent company can drift into a strike-off notice purely because nobody filed on time, and then reverse it. This status is genuinely ambiguous in a way the others are not.
For data quality purposes: Proposal to strike off is a warning signal. The company is not yet gone, but it is on the path to dissolution unless it takes action. Records with this status should be reviewed rather than imported into a live workflow without question.
What does receivership mean for a company?
Receivership means a secured creditor - usually a lender - has appointed a receiver to recover specific assets that were pledged as security. It is narrower than administration: the receiver’s duty is to the appointing creditor and to the charged assets, not to the company or its other creditors.
Because it targets particular assets rather than the whole entity, a company in receivership can carry on trading around the parts that have been seized.
A company can be in receivership while remaining otherwise operational. The receiver acts in the interests of the appointing creditor, not the company as a whole.
For data quality purposes: Receivership is a notable status that warrants awareness. The company may still be contactable and trading, but the financial situation is serious enough that a secured creditor has taken action.
How to check company status before CRM import
The Companies House checker lets you look up any UK company by name, company number, or website and returns the current public status, company number, registered office, and directors. It is a read-only public lookup that takes around two minutes and covers the key fields you need for a pre-import data quality check.
For a practical guide to what to check and how to use the results, see how to check a company before adding it to your CRM. To go further, Companies House data for B2B enrichment covers how the register feeds richer account records.
A note on using status for decisions
Company status from the public register is a public data point. It is not a creditworthiness assessment, a fraud indicator, or a measure of whether a company is a good prospect or counterparty.
For decisions that depend on financial health, payment history, or commercial trustworthiness, rely on the official register directly and use appropriate financial and credit reference sources alongside it. This guide describes what the statuses mean in data operations contexts only.
The reason status matters operationally is that it changes silently. Nobody emails you when a customer enters administration or a prospect gets struck off - the register updates, and your CRM does not. A record that was accurate the day it was imported quietly stops being accurate, and the first sign is usually a sequence sent to a company that no longer exists.
That is a checking problem, not a knowledge problem. DataFixr resolves company status as part of the pre-import check, so dissolved and non-active entities get flagged before they reach a live pipeline rather than after. Start using DataFixr free ->