How scoring works

Every company gets a score from 0 to 100 for how likely it is to have foreign-currency flows. The score is a sum of points from the signals below, multiplied by a factor for company size. Each company page shows exactly which signals fired and how many points each contributed.

A company is only listed if there is real evidence of cross-border money: it trades goods, it has an overseas parent company, or its accounts show foreign-currency activity. Three weaker things add points but never list a company by themselves: being in an export-heavy industry, having an individual owner who lives abroad, and being held by an investment fund.

The numbers on this page are read directly from the weights file in the source code, so they are always what the live site uses. They are a starting point. If you think one is wrong, open a pull request.

1. Trade in goods

HM Revenue & Customs publishes the name and postcode of every business that imported or exported goods each month, with the commodity codes involved (but not values or countries). We look at the last 12 months.

Regularity carries most of the weight on purpose. More than a quarter of importers appear in a single month, which is often one machine or one shipment. A business that imports every month has payments to make abroad every month.

Matching HMRC names to companies

HMRC does not publish company numbers, so we match on name and postcode. Trade points are scaled by how sure the match is:

• Same name and same postcode: 100%
• Same full name, and only one company on the register has it: 90%
• Same postcode and a name that differs by a typo: 75%

Sole traders and partnerships appear in HMRC's lists but not at Companies House, so they are not included.

2. Overseas ownership

From the Companies House register of people with significant control. Capped at 20 points in total.

When one overseas owner controls 20 or more UK companies it is usually an investment fund or holding structure rather than a trading parent, so it counts for half.

Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar do not count as overseas here, because they use sterling. Where a filing gives a country we cannot recognise, we score nothing rather than guess.

3. Filed accounts

Companies House publishes every set of accounts filed electronically. We read each company's latest accounts for direct evidence of currency activity. Capped at 30 points in total.

Tagged figures count for more than wording, because template accounting policies mention foreign currencies and forward contracts whether or not a company uses them. Most small companies file abridged accounts with no profit and loss account, so the absence of this signal says little. Where a signal comes from the text, the company page quotes the sentence so you can judge it yourself.

4. Industry

Up to 10 points from the company's SIC codes, with the highest weights for wholesale, freight forwarding, travel and manufacturing. SIC codes are self-declared and often vague, which is why this signal is small. The full table is in sic-weights.ts.

5. Size

A company importing every month might be moving thousands or millions. We do not know values, so we use the type of accounts a company files as a rough guide to size and multiply the points accordingly.

Companies in liquidation or administration are left out. Companies facing strike-off are heavily discounted.

Views, flags and what is hidden

• The default view shows small and medium companies that traded goods in 9 or more of the last 12 months. Larger companies score well too, but usually have a treasury team and a bank already. Every other view is one click away.
• Banks, insurers, funds, PLCs and non-profits are hidden unless you tick the box to include them or search for one by name. They may well deal in foreign currency, but they are rarely a broker's customer.
• Added to the list is the date a company first appeared here, which happens when the data is refreshed. It is not when the company was formed or when it started trading, and a company that drops off the list and later returns is dated from its return. Companies that were already listed when this began to be recorded carry no date.
• Companies you mark as not relevant are hidden from your own lists, and from nobody else's. They still turn up if you search for one by name, and they are all under "Not relevant" at the top of the list, where the mark can be cleared.
• New importer or exporter means the company first appeared in HMRC's lists within the last six months, checked against the eighteen months before that.
• Overseas owner registered in the last year means Companies House recorded the owner within the last 12 months. That can be a takeover, a restructure or a newly formed subsidiary; the register does not say which.
• Employees, turnover and the FX gain or loss come from the company's latest filed accounts. Most small companies do not have to report them, so filtering on one leaves out every company that did not. The FX figure is in the currency the accounts are prepared in, nearly always pounds. A figure that cannot be right, such as a headcount filed in thousands, is left out rather than shown.
• Specific goods are the 4-digit headings of the customs tariff, with HMRC's own descriptions. HMRC gives only the broad kind of goods when few businesses trade in something, so a company can deal in goods that are not listed against it.
• The months shown for a trader are the months it appeared on HMRC's list. A blank month means it was not found on that month's list. That is not proof it did not trade: HMRC lets businesses ask to be left off, and a name can be spelled differently from one month to the next.
• Same overseas owner lists other companies here that name the same controlling owner at Companies House. Owners are matched on name and country, so one owner filed under two spellings is brought together, and two different owners with the same name in the same country would be too.
• Trades from is the address HMRC publishes for the trader. It often differs from the registered office, which is frequently an accountant's.
• Website is shown only where a site at an address matching the company's name displays that company's registered number, which UK companies have to show on their websites. No public source lists company websites, so most companies have none shown here. That does not mean they have no website.

Similar companies

Each company page lists the companies most like it, and "See all similar companies" opens the full list. This is separate from the score: it compares what two companies do, not how likely either is to deal in foreign currency.

• What counts as something in common: the same industry code at Companies House, the same type of goods imported, or the same type of goods exported. For goods, only a company's 6 main lines each way are compared, so a general trader that happens to handle a little of everything does not match everyone.
• Rare things count for more. Two companies that both import coffee are more alike than two that both import machinery, because far fewer companies import coffee. Something one listed company in 12 has is worth 2.5 points, one in 100 is worth 4.6, and one in 1,000 is worth 6.9.
• To be listed a company must share at least 40% of the points the first company could share, and never fewer than 2.5. One common thing in common is not enough.
• Catch-all industry codes are ignored because they say nothing about what a company does: 74909 (other professional activities), 74990 (non-trading company), 82990 (other business support), 96090 (other services), 99999 (dormant company).
• Same size band, or a parent company in the same country, moves a company up the list by 1 point each. Neither can put a company on the list by itself.

Industry codes are chosen by the company and are often out of date, and HMRC's lists give types of goods but not amounts, so treat the list as a starting point. Each entry says exactly what it has in common.

What is not in the score yet

• Trade in services. HMRC's lists cover goods only, so a software exporter shows up through ownership, accounts and industry but not trade.
• Currencies, countries and amounts. None of the public sources give these.

Sources

• Companies House basic company data (monthly)
• Companies House people with significant control (daily)
• HMRC importer and exporter details (monthly), Open Government Licence v3.0
• Commodity descriptions: HM Revenue & Customs, uktradeinfo.com. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
• Companies House accounts data (daily and monthly)
• Companies House API, for current directors
• Companies' own websites, read once to confirm the web address shown