How to Check a Company Before Adding It to Your CRM

Adding a company to your CRM seems simple. You have a name, maybe a domain, and you create the record.

The problem is that company names and legal entities are messier than they look. “Acme UK Ltd” and “Acme UK Limited” are different strings. A company you found at an event six months ago may have dissolved since. Two companies can share a brand name but be entirely different legal entities with different registered offices, different company numbers, and different directors.

If those discrepancies enter the CRM unchecked, they multiply. Two records for the same company. Wrong company number on an account that downstream automation depends on. A dissolved company still live in your pipeline.

Checking before import is the cleaner path.

What to check before adding a company to your CRM

You need to confirm five things before the record enters your database:

1. Company status

Is the company active, dissolved, in liquidation, or somewhere in between? Status is the first filter. A dissolved company should not be in an active pipeline. A company in liquidation is a data point that needs to be visible rather than buried in a record created without a check.

The Companies House register shows the current public status for every registered UK company. It does not tell you whether a company is financially healthy, trustworthy, or a good prospect - that is a separate assessment. But it does tell you whether the legal entity is currently registered as active.

2. Official company name

The official Companies House name and the trading name are often different. A company might trade as “Acme” but be registered as “Acme UK Solutions Limited”. If your CRM record uses the trading name and downstream enrichment or account matching relies on the registered name, you end up with mismatches.

Confirming the official name before import means your CRM record and the legal record stay aligned. This matters most when you are importing at scale or matching companies across different data sources.

3. Company number

The company number is the permanent, unique identifier for a UK legal entity. It does not change when the company changes its name, moves address, or changes directors. Trading names, domains, and even official names can drift - the company number does not.

If you store the company number alongside the company name in your CRM, you have a reliable anchor for deduplication, matching, and enrichment workflows. If you skip it, you are relying on a name that can change.

4. Registered office

The registered office is the official address of the legal entity. It is not always the trading address, but it is the address that legal correspondence goes to. For account matching, territory assignment, or verifying that a company is based in the region you think it is, the registered office is the most reliable reference you have from the public register.

5. Active directors

Directors are not something you need to store for every CRM record, but they are useful in one specific situation: when you are trying to confirm that two company records actually point to the same legal entity. If the name and domain look similar but the directors are entirely different, you may be dealing with two separate companies.

For routine imports, a quick check that the director names look plausible for the company you expect is usually sufficient.

When to do a pre-import company check

You do not need to check every record against the public register before every import. The situations where it pays off most are:

• You are importing from a list where company names came from manual entry or a third-party source
• You are adding records from an event, webinar, or conference where people typed their own company names
• You are importing UK company records as part of a broader CRM data standardisation project
• You have accounts in the CRM where the company number is missing or inconsistent
• You are trying to match or merge duplicate account records and the names are similar but not identical

For high-volume imports, spot-checking a sample is better than nothing. For strategic accounts, a full check before import is worth the two minutes it takes.

How to run the check

The Companies House checker lets you look up any UK company by name, company number, or website and returns the registered status, official name, company number, directors, persons with significant control, and registered office. It is a read-only public lookup that does not modify anything in DataFixr and does not assess creditworthiness or solvency.

The lookup works like this:

1. Enter the company name, company number, or domain in the search field
2. The checker detects the input type and runs the appropriate lookup
3. Review the returned status, official name, and company number
4. If the result looks right, copy the key fields before importing the record
5. If multiple companies match, use the “show other results” option to find the right one by number

The export option lets you copy a plain-text summary or download a markdown report, which is useful if you are running spot checks on a list and want to keep a record of what was verified.

What to do after the check

Once you have confirmed the key fields, add them to your import file before the record enters the CRM:

• Official company name (as registered)
• Company number
• Company status
• Registered office (if your CRM tracks company address)

Most CRM imports let you map these to custom fields. If your CRM schema does not have a company number field yet, adding one before this kind of import is worth the setup time - it pays off every time you need to deduplicate or match accounts against an external source later.

What this check does not cover

A public register check is not a creditworthiness assessment, a fraud check, or a way to verify that a company is a good prospect. It tells you what the public register shows about the legal entity. For decisions that depend on financial health, payment history, or operational trustworthiness, you need additional sources.

The Companies House checker surfaces public record data. Use the official register directly for critical due-diligence decisions.

Building this into a regular workflow

A pre-import company check is most valuable when it becomes a habit rather than a one-off. The overhead is low - a two-minute lookup that prevents a class of CRM data problems that take much longer to fix once they are in.

For broader CRM import preparation, the CRM data cleaning workflow covers deduplication, field standardisation, and validation steps that complement a company status check. For enrichment beyond the public register, B2B data enrichment covers how to fill contact and company fields using additional data sources after the initial record is in the CRM.

DataFixr helps teams clean, enrich, and validate company and contact data before it reaches the CRM - so records arrive accurate and stay that way. Request early access ->