Cheapest Companies House accounts data?

[JonNorris@Crunch]

+1 for Duedil. No idea if it gives the most raw access, but it sure is pretty.

[JRCT]

As a contractor, what would you actually use this for?

I can imagine if you were taking a contract with a small company, you'd want to check them out. Particularly if you didn't know much about them.

I can imagine the same for an agency. Other than that, is there any other reason.

[drumtochty]

You cannot work out a day rate from either the abridged accounts in companies house or the full accounts delivered to HMRC.

[TheFaQQer]

As a contractor, what would you actually use this for?

I can imagine if you were taking a contract with a small company, you'd want to check them out. Particularly if you didn't know much about them.

I can imagine the same for an agency. Other than that, is there any other reason.

You can easily see any inter-company ownership etc.

I have a watch list for some guys I used to work with, just so I can see how badly their company is doing, as wish them every failure life could throw at them all.

I mainly use Duedil for when someone posts "I've just been told about a magic company that will save you 90% of your income...", just to see if they exist. I've also used some of the data on there to complain to the ASA about some websites out there (eg. "we've got 30 years experience" for the umbrella that set up last Friday)

I should get out more, really.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

You cannot work out a day rate from either the abridged accounts in companies house or the full accounts delivered to HMRC.

This is very true. But, if you know your way around a set of accounts you can make a fairly good stab at the company's profit - which may or may not give you the info you need. For example, you can easily see how much profit has been retained and also what the company's current liabilities are. If you make a reasonable assumption around what they owe in VAT (a lot of guesswork required, I'll concede) you can then get a rough idea of outstanding CT. From that, again requires an assumption that it is only CT relating to the year in question that is outstanding and no in-year payments have been made, you can get a rough stab at the profit.

If the company is showing an increase in bank balances, it may be an indicator that the shareholders are only divvi-ing up to the basic rate threshold. You can then make an educated guess at how much this would be based on the shareholder information.

Cross reference these two pieces of "information" and you could be between 0% and 100% accurate. But its an awful lot of work and an awful lot of what-ifs just because you're essentially nosy.