Just like an individual, company itself is an entity with a credit as well as a legal history. Such information about businesses was first given out by Dun and Bradstreet. It created a number also known as the DUNS number. It’s a 9 figure number that identifies a business and its related business information report (BIR).This number can be used to find a company`s credit history as well as legal background.
Governing Sources:
Start off with checking the government sources. Federal trade commission regulates every single business in the United States of America. To promote the consumer protection is the prime responsibility of FTC. It’s also responsible to monitor the unfair trade practices by any businesses in USA such as coercive monopolies. Along with FTC, businesses are also monitored and regulated by the Security and Exchange Commission as well as law firms of the American Bar Association. Whichever company you want to do a background check on, identify the industry it belongs to and conduct the related search on a governing agency. Supposedly you are thinking about starting your own hair saloon, it’s a good idea to check with the your state`s department of professional regulations. In such a business every employee has to be license in cosmetology.
Court Records
Next step would be to start searching the court records for your county. Along with court records, also look for property tax records. The county courts have a record of all past public records.to search a company you will have to go through the available data. The information you shall look for would be was the company ever involved in a lawsuit, how it ended and what kind of lawsuit it was. As for property tax records, you shall check county tax records if a company owns its property on which it operates. You may also take help of your attorney to search if the company is not currently involved in a federal lawsuit by checking the federal records as well.
BBB
Once you are done with the offline sources, you can contact the BBB(short for better business bureau).it’s the business police. It not only provide public records about businesses but business are also graded on a scale of A to F.BBB deals with the business ethics, false promotion, fraud monitoring, consumer awareness as well as acts as facilitator between consumer and companies.
Credit Report
You can also get business credit report from the reliable services such as Dun and Bradstreet, Experian, Smart Business Reports, Equifax and Lexis Nexis. They will charge you as low as 30$ to as much as 150$ for a background check report on a business. For background checks, another good website is www.intelligator.com,which provides prompt information on backgrounds.