See if a business is growing, in one minute

One year of accounts is a snapshot. You're lending against a story.

Is this business growing or shrinking? Here's how to read every year it has filed, in one place.

Start on the company page. The summary reads the latest accounts for you: turnover of £7.7m, up 17% on the year before, and net assets of £9.1m. The key figures underneath each carry a small trend line.

Now open the Accounts tab. Every set of accounts the company has filed at Companies House is read into one table, year by year. For this company that's 12 years, free, and you don't need an account.

The switch at the top changes the units between pounds, thousands and millions, so a large business and a small one both read easily.

Each line of the profit and loss account and the balance sheet runs across the years, with a small chart beside it, so the direction is plain. Every figure is shown as filed, and each column says where it came from.

Tick Change on last year, and every figure shows how far it moved against the year before.

Further down, the charts plot revenue and profit, the balance sheet, the main ratios and growth across every year held.

When you need the figures in your own spreadsheet, Download CSV gives you the whole table.

Net assets of £9.1m, up from £1.8m over 12 years of filed accounts.

Read the trend, not the snapshot. companystack.co.uk.