When a larger organisation considers you as a supplier, it runs a financial check before it lets you anywhere near a contract. Knowing what they look for, and having it ready, can be the difference between winning the work and being quietly passed over.
The usual requests
Most procurement and supplier checks ask for some mix of the following:
- Your most recent accounts, usually the last two or three years, to show a stable trading history.
- Management accounts, a recent profit and loss and balance sheet, often more current than your filed accounts.
- Cash flow information, to show you can fund the work without running into trouble.
- Evidence of compliance, confirmation that your tax affairs and filings are in order.
- Insurance and accreditations, which sit alongside the financial picture.
- Social value, increasingly, a description of the local jobs, training and community benefit your work creates.
Why they ask
A buyer taking on a new supplier is taking on risk. If you run out of cash half way through a job, or turn out to have compliance problems, that becomes their problem too. Clear, current, credible figures tell them you are a safe choice. That is genuinely what these checks are about.
How to be ready
The single most useful thing you can do is keep your bookkeeping current, so that management accounts and a cash flow forecast are always a quick job rather than a month of catching up. The second is to keep your filings spotless, so your compliance is never in question.
That combination, current records and clean compliance, is what lets you respond to an opportunity in days instead of weeks. In a competitive tender, speed and credibility win.
We make it routine
We keep our clients’ records current and their compliance watertight, and we produce management accounts and forecasts whenever they are needed. So when a contract asks for your figures, you simply send them.
Want that kind of readiness? See how we get you tender ready or get your instant quote.