A desk screen for buying a small British business.
Hittaco pulls Companies House filings, reads the real numbers out of the latest filed accounts, then puts every survivor through a judgement pass against Codie Sanchez’s published R.I.C.H. / SOWS / BRIT framework. You get a ranked, evidence-tagged shortlist instead of forty open tabs.
Companies House filings, the real numbers from the latest filed accounts, then a judgement pass against the published R.I.C.H. / SOWS / BRIT framework. A ranked, evidence-tagged shortlist instead of forty open tabs.
Self-funded searchers
One buyer, one mandate, £2–5m revenue targets. You do not have an analyst, so the first hundred hours of filtering come out of your evenings.
Small search funds
Two or three partners covering several SIC codes at once, needing a defensible reason each name got kept or killed.
Anyone tired of the manual pass
You have scraped Companies House by hand, opened the PDF accounts, and lost the thread by company nineteen. It does not scale, and it is not the interesting part.
How it works
Three stages · two mechanical, one judgementSearch
SIC code, radius, minimum trading age, filing status. A deterministic sweep of the register — same query, same universe, every time.
Financials
Real figures out of the latest filed accounts — machine-readable iXBRL first, a PDF read as fallback. Every number carries the tag that says which.
Qualitative pass
Claude reads each survivor against the published R.I.C.H. / SOWS / BRIT framework: buyer fit, owner dependence, succession signals, maintainable earnings, DSCR, downside stress test.
A ranked shortlist you can defend line by line.
Every claim in the report is tagged with where it came from. Where the accounts do not say, the report says UNKNOWN rather than guessing.
- 01Ranked shortlist with a score out of 100 and a verdict tag
- 02Evidence tags on every figure — CONFIRMED, PDF-READ, UNKNOWN
- 03Owner-dependence and succession read from the officer history
- 04Maintainable-earnings and DSCR sanity check at your assumed leverage
- 05Downside stress test — what breaks first, and at what revenue
- 06A per-company investment memo you can send to a partner or a bank
This is a desk screen. It is not due diligence.
Everything Hittaco knows, it knows from the public register. Companies House filings, officer histories and the latest filed accounts — nothing private, nothing from the seller, no conversations with management.
It covers stages one to three of a five-stage funnel. Stage four is contact and information exchange; stage five is diligence with an accountant and a lawyer. Hittaco tells you which twelve names are worth spending stage four on.
Reported earnings are not maintainable earnings. Small-company accounts are filed to satisfy a filing requirement, not to price a business — add-backs, related-party rent and owner remuneration all move the number. Where the report estimates, it says so and shows the arithmetic.
Nothing here is investment advice. A score is a reading of public filings against a published framework, not a recommendation to buy.
Request access
[PLACEHOLDER — access copy] Seats are released in small cohorts so runs stay inside the register’s rate limits. Tell us the mandate you are screening for and we will send a password if there is room.
[PLACEHOLDER — price: £—— per seat / month · —— runs included]
Is this due diligence?
No. It is the screen that happens before diligence — a filter to decide who is worth a phone call. Diligence still needs an accountant, a lawyer and the seller’s own numbers.
Where does the data come from?
Companies House only: the register, officer histories and the latest filed accounts. iXBRL where it exists, a PDF read where it does not — and the report tells you which.
What does a seat cost?
[PLACEHOLDER] £—— per month per seat, including —— runs. Cohort pricing while access is invite only.
Can I screen any industry?
Any SIC code on the register. It works best on established, asset-backed trades where the accounts actually carry a turnover figure.
Does the score decide for me?
It ranks and it argues; you decide. Every score opens into the evidence behind it, so you can disagree with a specific line rather than the whole number.
Whose framework is it?
Codie Sanchez’s published R.I.C.H. / SOWS / BRIT criteria, applied as written. Hittaco is not affiliated with or endorsed by her.