When the auditor says the lights might be going out.
Every UK company files its accounts in iXBRL. When the auditor adds a “material uncertainty relating to going concern” note, they’re publicly stating the company may not survive twelve months. We parse it from the filing, before you sign.
The auditor’s reputation is on the line.
Under International Standard on Auditing (ISA) 570, when an auditor concludes that the going-concern basis of accounting is still appropriate but a material uncertainty exists, they must add a “Material Uncertainty Related to Going Concern” section to the audit report. The section explains the uncertainty plainly; the audit opinion itself remains unmodified.
The note is the auditor publicly stating: this company may not be able to pay its debts as they fall due over the next twelve months. Their professional indemnity rides on it. They wouldn’t add the note if they could avoid it.
It’s public, but it’s buried.
The note is published in the prospect’s annual accounts on Companies House. But Companies House delivers accounts as PDFs and as iXBRL, an XML dialect with structured tags for every line item. Reading the iXBRL filing means parsing tagged content like uk-bus:GoingConcernUncertainty and uk-bus:MaterialUncertaintyRelatedToGoingConcern.
Most credit checks return the headline accounts data (turnover, profit, cash) but skip the audit opinion structure entirely. Most agencies signing a £20k engagement never read the filing. We do, on every scan.
Score every prospect before you sign.
Going concern is one of many signals on the IQ scorecard. Phoenix detection catches directors who’ve already dissolved a company once. HMRC tax-defaulter matching catches prospects who owe HMRC. All three flow into a single risk band.