Should You Credit Check a Client Before Invoicing? A UK Freelancer's Guide

Yes, you should credit check a new client before invoicing them, whenever the job is worth enough or the relationship is new enough to justify it. Ten minutes on the free Companies House register, plus the GOV.UK payment practices service for larger businesses, will flag the clearest warning signs before you commit any time.

None of this guarantees payment. But it moves you from finding out how a client pays after the work is delivered to finding out beforehand, while you can still set terms, ask for a deposit, or walk away.

Checking a client up front is one answer to numbers like these. For the wider picture of what late payment costs UK businesses and freelancers, see our UK late payment statistics reference.

1. The short answer: yes, and it takes ten minutes

Freelancers and small businesses tend to screen a new client on gut feel, a good first call, a polished website, a friendly referral. None of that tells you whether the entity behind the client is actually able or likely to pay.

A proper check does not need to be formal or expensive. For most jobs it means three things: confirming the client's legal identity on Companies House, checking its payment record if it is a larger business, and, for a higher-value or higher-risk job, a quick search of the County Court Judgments register.

2. Check Companies House first (free)

The Companies House register is the free starting point for any UK limited company. Search the exact name on the client's paperwork, not a shortened trading name, and confirm it returns an active company rather than one marked dissolved, in liquidation, or struck off.

Once you have the right company, three things are worth two minutes each:

• Incorporation date and filing history. A company with several years of filed accounts has a track record. One incorporated a few weeks ago has none, which is not damning on its own, but it changes how much weight the rest of your check should carry.
• Registered office. An address that belongs to the client's actual premises is a good sign. An address that is clearly a formation agent or accountant's office is common and not automatically suspicious, but it is worth noting alongside everything else.
• Directors and people with significant control. Check whether any listed director has a disqualification against their name, and whether the people with significant control data matches who you actually believe you are dealing with.

3. Red flags worth pausing on

None of the signals below prove a client will not pay you. Taken together, though, they are worth pausing on before you take on a large piece of work.

A new company is not automatically a bad payer, and an established one with polished accounts can still pay you late. Treat these signals as reasons to ask more questions or adjust your terms, not as an automatic reason to turn work away.

4. Check payment practices for larger clients

For a larger UK client, there is a genuinely useful, free, and underused tool: the GOV.UK service for checking when businesses pay invoices. Large businesses are legally required to report on their payment practices twice a year, and this service lets you look up that reporting for free.

It shows the average time taken to pay an invoice and the proportion of invoices paid late, drawn directly from the client's own reporting rather than anything self-reported to you. If a prospective client's average sits at 60 or 70 days, that is worth factoring into your terms before you agree to anything, not after the first invoice goes unpaid.

5. County Court Judgments: what they tell you

A County Court Judgment (CCJ) is a court order recording that someone was found to owe a debt and did not pay it, or did not defend the claim. Searching the official register via TrustOnline, run by Registry Trust on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, costs a modest fee per search rather than being free, currently around £6 for a single register.

A single CCJ, especially an older one that has since been satisfied, is not necessarily alarming. A cluster of recent, unsatisfied judgments against the same entity is a much stronger signal, and a genuinely useful one before you agree to a large job.

6. What a credit check can't tell you

It is worth being honest about the limits here. A credit check is a snapshot, not a guarantee, and it is easy to put too much weight on a clean result.

A healthy-looking, long-established company can still decide to pay you late, dispute the invoice unfairly, or simply have a bad quarter after you have already started the work. Equally, a brand-new company with no track record is not automatically a bad payer. Every established business was once a new one with nothing to check.

What these checks actually buy you is a better-informed decision, not a certainty. They tell you what has happened before, not what will happen this time. Use them to decide how cautious your terms should be, rather than as a simple pass or fail.

None of this applies if the client is based outside the UK: Companies House and the CCJ register only cover UK-registered entities. For a new international client, the risk assessment shifts to your contract terms instead, see our guide to chasing an unpaid invoice from an overseas client for what to get right before you invoice one.

7. If the client looks risky but you still want the work

A red flag or two does not have to mean turning the work down. It usually means adjusting how you protect yourself before you start, not walking away.

• Ask for a deposit. A part-payment upfront, commonly 25 to 50%, reduces how much you stand to lose if the rest goes unpaid, and it is a reasonable ask of any legitimate new client.
• Shorten your payment terms. 14 days instead of 30 gives you an earlier signal if something is wrong, without needing to change the price or the work itself.
• Stage the invoicing. Bill in instalments tied to milestones rather than one lump sum at the end, so nonpayment shows up early and limits how much unpaid work you have done by the time it does.
• Get the terms in writing upfront. A short, clear contract or written scope avoids the arguments that make a marginal client harder to chase later. Our guide to getting paid with no written contract covers what happens if you skip this step and it goes wrong.

Staged invoicing and shorter terms are much easier to manage with proper invoicing software rather than manual reminders, particularly once a client is on instalments.

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