Filter thousands of companies by turnover, profitability, Z-Score, sector, and location. Save screens, run batch analysis on 1,000 companies at once, and export results — all grounded in daily Companies House and XBRL data, not a stale quarterly snapshot.
Most company search tools let you find one business at a time by name. The Screener works the other way round — you describe the kind of company you're looking for, and it finds every UK company matching that description, from the entire register, in one query.
Combine financial thresholds, sector, location, risk band, and AI-chat availability into a single filter set.
Populous searches across every UK company with a matching profile, updated from the latest daily filing data.
Sort and configure results, select matches across the full result set, save the screen for reuse, or export to CSV.
Mix and match any of the following — the Screener applies them all as a single combined query, not separate passes.
Turnover, gross profit, operating profit, profit after tax — set minimum and maximum thresholds on any or all of them.
Total assets, net assets, current assets, fixed assets, and total liabilities, filtered by range.
Altman Z-Score range, liquidity ratio, and a simplified low/moderate/high risk badge for fast scanning.
Filter by SIC code, town/city, or exact postcode — narrow to a specific region or industry classification.
Employee count range and dormant/active status, for distinguishing genuine trading businesses from shell entities.
Filter to only companies with narrative data already indexed — useful when you plan to follow up screening with grounded Q&A on results.
An associate sourcing bolt-on acquisitions for a portfolio company needs UK manufacturing businesses with turnover between £2M–£10M, positive profitability, and a healthy Z-Score — avoiding distressed targets that would need a turnaround rather than a clean integration.
A credit controller uploads their full customer list as a batch query, then filters the results to surface only the accounts whose Z-Score has slipped into the moderate or high risk band — the small subset that actually needs manual review this month.
A procurement lead has a list of potential suppliers from a trade directory and wants to rule out anyone financially unstable before reaching out — screening by risk band and liquidity ratio first, saving relationship-building time for viable candidates only.
| Capability | Populous Screener | Manual Companies House search |
|---|---|---|
| Screen by financial criteria across the whole register | Yes | Name/number search only |
| Combine turnover, Z-Score, sector, and location in one query | Yes | Not supported |
| Batch-screen 1,000 known companies at once | Yes | One at a time |
| Data freshness | Daily | As filed, no aggregation |
| Save and reuse a screen | Yes | Not available |
Populous ingests Companies House and XBRL filings daily, not quarterly. New accounts, charges, and officer changes are typically searchable within a day of being filed.
Yes — the Screener also supports identity-based search (name, number, SIC code, location) for companies without full financial data, alongside financial-criteria search for companies that do.
The Screener searches the full UK company register in one query. Batch analysis separately supports uploading or pasting up to 1,000 specific company numbers for simultaneous screening.
Yes — export any screened result set to CSV, including your selected columns, either for the current page or the full matching set.