Companies

Companies looks up a company's registered details, directors and charges, and imports its filings. It is the second tab in the Lookup panel strip.

It is a much smaller form than Court cases, because a company is found in one of two ways and neither needs nine fields. You either have the registry identifier, in which case the identifier is the whole search, or you have a name, in which case the register ranks its matches for you.

It is also the only mode where a document can sit behind a payment. Everything a company record shows on screen answers immediately. Only the filing PDFs are retrieved, and that is covered in Unlocking records.

The search form

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Search the companies register

Click the Companies tab in the panel strip. The form changes to three fields, and the quiet filter chip that Court cases carries in its search bar is not there, because neither of the remaining company fields is a picker.

Control	Where	Required	What it does
Company name or identifier	The search bar itself	Yes	Free text. Prompted with e.g. Infosys Limited, or a CIN / LLPIN / DIN. The line beneath the bar states the rule: Paste a registry identifier to go straight to that company, or type a name to see ranked matches.
Bookmark	An icon button left of Search	No	Saves the query currently in the form. Disabled until at least one field has a value. See Saved searches.
Search	Right end of the bar	No	Runs the search. Reads Searching… while it runs.
State	Behind More filters (2)	No	Free text, not a picker. Optional. Useful when several companies share a name.
City	Behind More filters (2)	No	Free text. Narrows further where a name is common.

Company name or identifier is the one required field anywhere in Lookup. Press Search with it empty and the panel answers Enter Company name or identifier to search. without running anything, so an empty search never costs a call.

Once any field has a value, Clear filters appears beneath the panel and empties the form in one press.

Reading the results

Company results use the same list as court matters, so the line above the list carries the same meaning: a plain count when the register gave a total, Showing 20 matches. There may be more. Refine the search or page through. when there is a next page, and Showing the top 20 matches. Narrow the search to see different results. when the list is capped.

That last line matters more here than anywhere else in Lookup. The companies register truncates its candidate list rather than paging it, so a full page frequently is the whole answer you are going to get. Next is disabled in that case rather than re-running the same search.

Where nothing matches, the list is replaced by No matching records found.

Pasting a CIN, LLPIN or DIN normally returns the one company rather than a ranked list. Typing a name returns candidates ranked by the register's own match, in which case State and City are the fastest way to separate two companies with the same name.

What a company record shows

Opening a result replaces the home. The record has the same four regions as a court matter, plus one that only companies get.

Region	What it holds
Header	The company name, the record id beneath it, and Close on the right.
Field grid	The registered profile, in up to three columns.
Use this matter in:	Research this matter and Build a case strategy.
Retrieval panel	The state of the filing documents. Companies only. See Unlocking records.
Documents	The extractions and filings, each badged, with the folder picker and the import button.

The field grid

Field	What it is
Status	The company's status on the register.
Incorporated	Date of incorporation.
Authorised capital	As the register states it.
Paid-up capital	As the register states it.
Registered address	The registered office address.
Registrar	The registrar of companies the entity sits under.
Directors	How many directors the register lists.
Registered charges	How many charges the register lists.

A field the register left empty, or returned as zero, is not shown. A short grid means a thin register entry, not a failed read.

Directors and charges appear here as counts. The named detail behind those counts is what the structured extractions in the document list carry.

Documents on a company record

A company's document list has two halves, and the badges separate them.

Extractions come first. These are the structured data behind a filing, listed with a plain-language name and the form id, for example Financial statements (most recent) — AOC-4. They are badged Included: they need no retrieval, and importing them costs nothing further. The named forms are financial statements, the annual return, the small-company annual return, share allotments and registered charges.

Filings come second. Every filing is listed with its form id and filing date, for example AOC-4 filed 2025-10-14, along with its page count where the register gave one. Every one of them is badged Needs access, with a lock, and its checkbox is disabled.

That split is the whole cost story on this screen. The filings list is free: you can see what exists, what form it was, when it was filed and how long it is, before deciding anything. It is the filing PDFs themselves that are retrieved.

Badge	What it means	Can you import it
Included	The document's content already arrived with the record.	Yes, at no further cost.
Needs access	A filing PDF that has not been retrieved yet.	Not until the documents are retrieved.
Not yet published	The register lists the document but has nothing to hand over.	No.

Select all (5) ticks every Included document and tells you how many that is. Save to picks the File Library folder, and the import button carries your count: Import 5.

Once a retrieval has completed, the filings stop being disabled and can be ticked and imported like anything else.

Next steps

• Unlocking records - what retrieving the filing PDFs costs, how long it takes, and who else can use them.
• Court cases - the other search form, in full.
• Saved searches - keep a company search and re-run it later.

Search the companies register (opens in a new tab)