I am exploring ways to automate some of the processes we currently handle manually through the Companies House portal. Specifically, each of my colleagues logs into the portal, searches by company name, and then ‘follows’ the company to receive updates. We want to automate this process to enhance efficiency but aim to do so using the existing built-in notifications system rather than setting up a bespoke VM/streaming API automation.
From what I’ve gathered, there doesn’t seem to be a direct endpoint in the API documentation that supports the ‘follow company’ action. Has anyone tackled this sort of automation before, or could provide any guidance on where I might find more information on this functionality? Or perhaps someone has implemented a workaround using the existing API endpoints?
Thanks in advance for any help or pointers you can provide.
There isn’t a first party solution available from companies house to subscribe to specific companies to “follow” updates. The closest service is the streaming API where you could filter by company number on the client side after receiving every update to see if its relevant. You could then use the REST API to download the filings that triggered the change. Unfortunately you don’t get a “diff” of what data changed, you just get the new state.
If you would like a prebuilt solution, I can offer you a commercial product which allows you to specify criteria (either a list of companies or filter by sic code etc) and get a webhook call when one of them is updated, along with the information that changed. This includes company profile data, officers, PSCs, insolvencies and financial accounts data (eg number of employees).
For the purpose of automation I could provide you with an API key to subscribe to companies in my system programatically.