# Company snapshots

A snapshot is what D2K Companies House Lookup has stored about one company.
It opens as the **Companies House Snapshot** card. It is
created the first time anybody looks that company up, and refreshed when it
gets old or when you ask for it.

Open **Companies House Snapshots** from the search to see every company the
app knows about.

## What a snapshot holds

| Field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| **Company Registration Number** | The register |
| **Registered Name** | The register - the legal name |
| **Trading Name** | **You.** Companies House does not publish trading names |
| **Company Status** | The register - Active, Liquidation, Dissolved and so on |
| **Company Type** | The register - Private Limited, PLC, LLP and so on |
| **Incorporation Date** | The register |
| **Registered office address** | The register: **Address Line 1**, **Address Line 2**, **City**, **County**, **Post Code** and **Country** |
| **Country of Origin (ISO)** | The register: the two-letter code of the country the company comes from, GB for a UK company |
| **SIC codes** | The register, with the official description of each. The **SIC Codes** part lists them in the register's order (**Sequence**), with the **SIC Code** and its **SIC Description** |
| **Last Refreshed** | When the app last fetched it |

Everything the register owns is read-only on the card. **Trading Name** is the
one field you can type into, and it survives every refresh.

![A Companies House Snapshot card. General shows the company registration number, registered name, company status Active, company type Public Limited Company and incorporation date. Registered Address shows the address lines, city, post code and country. A SIC Codes part sits alongside, and the Home tab offers Refresh from Companies House.](https://docs.d2k.uk/assets/img/companies-house-lookup/snapshot-card.jpg)

*A snapshot card, with the registered details, the registered address and the SIC codes.*

## Why Trading Name is yours to fill in

Companies House publishes the registered name and any formal previous names.
It has no concept of a trading name. So if you want "t/a Greggs" recorded
against `GREGGS PLC`, type it into **Trading Name** and it stays there.

When a customer or vendor is created or filled from the register, the
registered name goes into **Name** - that is what prints on documents and
identifies who you are trading with - and the trading name, if you have
recorded one, goes into **Name 2**, which Business Central prints on the
continuation line underneath.

## Refresh a company

- **Refresh from Companies House** on the snapshot card fetches that company
  again immediately, ignoring the cache age.
- **Refresh Selected** on the snapshot list does the same for every row you
  have selected. Each one is a separate call to the register, so refreshing
  hundreds at once will run into the rate limit.

## Move between a company and your records

From a snapshot, the **Linked Records** actions open the **Customer**,
**Vendor** or **Contact** carrying that registration number - the card if
there is one, a filtered list if there are several, and a message pointing at
the Create actions if there are none. One company can legitimately be several
accounts.

The **Create** actions go the other way: see [Create a customer, vendor or contact from a company number](https://docs.d2k.uk/companies-house-lookup/create-from-companies-house).

## Statuses that mean trouble

These statuses are shown in red wherever the app displays them, and are
counted by the **Companies in Distress** tile on the [Role Centre](https://docs.d2k.uk/companies-house-lookup/companies-house-role-centre):

Liquidation · Administration · Receivership · Dissolved · Voluntary
Arrangement · Insolvency Proceedings · Closed · Removed · Converted or Closed

A red status is a prompt to check before you ship or extend credit. The app
does not block anything on its own.

## How long snapshots are kept

Snapshots are a cache, not an archive. They are registered with the standard
Business Central **Retention Policies**, so an administrator decides how long
to keep them and the platform does the housekeeping. Nothing is deleted
without a policy you configured.

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Source: https://docs.d2k.uk/companies-house-lookup/company-snapshots
Last updated: 2026-10-04
