Company Lookup Before Signing a Client

Why a company lookup belongs before the contract

After you sign, your leverage shrinks. You have committed time, sometimes subcontractors, and the client controls when you get paid. Before you sign, you can still ask for a deposit, shorten the payment terms or walk away. A lookup gives you facts to make that choice. It also protects the client relationship: asking for standard terms based on a documented process feels routine, while asking for a deposit after a gut feeling feels personal.

Collect the right details from the client first

A lookup is only as good as the identifiers you start with. During the first call or in your intake form, ask for:

• The full legal name of the business, including LLC, Inc. or Corp.
• The state where the company is registered, which is not always where it operates
• The company website domain
• The name and title of the person who signs the contract
• The billing contact or accounts payable email

Clients who work with vendors regularly expect these questions. If someone refuses to share a legal name for a paid engagement, that refusal is information.

Look up the company in the state registry

Every corporation and LLC in the US is registered with a state, usually through the Secretary of State or a similar office. Most states offer a public online search. Search by the exact legal name and check:

• Entity status: active or good standing, versus dissolved, forfeited, revoked, suspended or inactive
• Formation date, and whether it fits the history the client describes
• Registered agent, the official contact for legal notices
• Entity type and the state of formation
• Recent annual reports or filings, which show the company is maintained

A status other than active is the single strongest signal in a lookup. Forfeited or revoked often means the company stopped filing reports or paying state fees. That does not always mean fraud, but it does mean you should not extend credit until the status is fixed. For state by state links, read our secretary of state business search guide, and for LLC specific status values see the llc lookup page.

Check the domain, website and mailbox

Online signals catch problems that registries miss, especially with businesses that were formed long ago but recently repurposed.

• Domain age: public domain registration records (RDAP) show when the domain was registered. A domain from last month behind a company that claims ten years of history deserves a question.
• Website: does it load over HTTPS, does it have real content about services, people and contact details, and does it match the name on the registry entry
• Mail setup: DNS records (MX, SPF, DMARC) show whether the domain runs a working business mailbox. A company that writes only from a free personal address while claiming a large team is unusual.
• Consistency: same name, same services and same location across the website, public listings and the contract

Search for disputes, reviews and sanctions

Next, look at how the business is seen from the outside.

• Public review platforms and business listings, especially comments from suppliers or former employees about pay
• News and public court indexes for lawsuits filed by vendors, liens or judgments tied to the company
• Sanctions screening of the company and its listed principals against the OFAC SDN list and other public government sanctions lists

Read disputes with care. A large company will have some lawsuits simply because of its size. What matters is a pattern of unpaid vendors, recent judgments or a lien that suggests cash trouble. Keep all of this in a business capacity. The point is how the company handles its obligations, not anyone's private life.

What your company lookup results mean

These readings are general guidance, not legal advice. You know your industry and your client better than any table.

How long a manual lookup takes

Doing all of this by hand means a registry search, a domain lookup, a DNS check, a few review sites, a news search, a court index and a sanctions list. For one client that is often an hour of tabs, and it is easy to skip a step when you are busy. That is why many freelancers and agencies run a lookup only on large projects and skip it on the small ones, which is often where trouble starts. A consistent company background check on every new client is easier to keep up when it takes a minute.

How ClientVetter runs the lookup for you

ClientVetter brings the same public sources into one report. You type the client's domain, add the legal name and state if you know them, and the report shows:

• The registry match with status, formation date and registered agent
• Domain age, HTTPS status and mail records
• A summary of public reviews and listings with links
• Public dispute and court record mentions in a business capacity
• Evidence-backed member reports from the non paying clients database, each with the company's reply
• Sanctions screening results
• A risk score from 0 to 100 with a Low, Watch or High band, every point tied to a reason and a source link
• Suggested terms for the band, plus PDF export

For clients you already work with, monitoring alerts you when a registry status, domain or report changes. Starter includes 25 full client checks and 10 monitored clients each month. Team includes 120 checks, 50 monitored clients and 5 seats. Usage resets each billing period, and deleting a report does not return a check. See the company background verification page for how identity matching works, and client due diligence for building the lookup into your intake.

What a company lookup is not

A company lookup is about the business you will invoice. ClientVetter is not a consumer reporting agency, and its reports are not consumer reports. People appear only in their role at a company, with no home addresses, criminal history, family or private life, and reports may not be used for credit, insurance, employment or housing decisions about an individual. All data comes from public sources and from member reports backed by evidence.