How to check the credibility of a contractor in Poland?

KRS – National Court Register (https://ems.ms.gov.pl/)

In the National Court Register, you confirms confirm that the company is actually registered. You can check what is the date of registration – the longer our candidate for a partner operates on the market, the more reliable it is. You will see who is the owner (or owners) of the company and who is authorized to represent it. PKD codes ( codes of business activity) will help you to verify if the area of ​​cooperation we talk about with the company is consistent with the scope of services that a company can perform according to the law. In the National Court Register, you can also find out whether the company’s activities are not suspended and whether bankruptcy proceedings are pending or not.

On this page you will also check whether the company is not listed in the Insolvent Debtors Register. Doing business with companies that are registered here is a very high risk.

Arrears in the Tax Office and Social Security

Information that the company is in arrears with its financial obligations tells us that we may be dealing with an unreliable financial payer.

The Tax Office and the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) issue a certificate of non-payment to them with payments respectively – concerning tax liabilities and social insurance contributions. An application for such a certificate may be submitted by the company concerned. So, in order to obtain such information, we must ask our customer to apply for a certificate from the Tax Office or Social Security. You can not check it independently, you have to ask your customer to provide clearance certificate.

BIG – Economic Information Bureau (Commercial Debt Register)

This is another source of information about unreliable debtors. The popular BIGs in Poland are:

– National Debt Register

– BIG Infomonitor

– ERIF Economic Information Office

Cooperation with BIGs is payable. Each of the BIGs builds its database – information about a particular company can be repeated in various BIGs, but it can also appear in only one Office.

Exchange of debts

Here we will check if someone has sold for sale the expired debt of our potential customer. If we find such a debt, it is a warning for us about the financial reliability of the company. An example of a debt exchange can be https://www.dlugi.info/

Economic Intelligence Private Agencies

These are specialized companies that can be ordered to verify the reliability of our future partner.

Opinions about the company on the Internet

The Internet is a real mine of knowledge. Let’s enter the name of the company that interests us on Google and let’s look at the search result. If the search engine did not find anything or found very little, we have a warning signal about the business activity of our partner.

Let’s notice whether the company has its website, how it looks and how it works. Read the opinions about the company. Let’s see if the company has a profile on social networks and what are the opinions there.

Let’s look with a common-sense at the information collected – it is very likely that on this basis we will build a real image of the company with which we want to start cooperation.

Reference

If the company has a history of its activity – ask for references from customers with whom it cooperated or cooperates.

Conclusions

As a minimum, we recommend verification in the National Court Register, the Internet and in a selected BIG.