How we detect company signals

When a company enters external administration — voluntary administration, receivership, or liquidation — ASIC updates its company status field in the bulk data extract. Company Radar detects that status change on the next extract cycle and fires a Critical alert. This is the highest-confidence insolvency signal because it reflects an official ASIC record, not a court application that may still be contested.

ASIC Published Notices carries structured records of every creditors meeting notice, administrator or liquidator appointment, and deed of company arrangement lodged with ASIC. Appointment notices — voluntary administrator, liquidator, controller, receiver — are classified as Critical: once an administrator is appointed, the company is in external administration. The gazette notice and the ASIC status field update reflect the same underlying event, and the notice frequently arrives first. Creditors meetings and deeds of company arrangement remain Warning (distress signals where the outcome is still being determined). We also surface licence suspensions from QBCC and NSW Fair Trading in this category as Warning: a suspended contractor licence is a leading indicator of financial difficulty.

The Australian Business Register (ABR) publishes ABN status and GST registration status as part of its bulk extract. A GST cancellation means the entity has either voluntarily deregistered for GST (often because turnover dropped below the threshold) or — more critically in a business context — has been cancelled by the ATO for non-compliance. An ABN cancellation is more severe: the entity has ceased operations or been administratively cancelled. Conversely, a new ABN registration may be relevant to supply-chain intelligence: a new supplier or customer has commenced trading.

Court listings are a leading indicator: a winding-up application filed against a company in the Federal Court appears on the cause list before any ASIC status change occurs. Company Radar scrapes daily court lists from the Federal Court, NSW Supreme Court, Queensland Supreme Court, and Victorian Supreme Court, matching party names against monitored entities. We also ingest published judgments, which confirm the outcome of matters that have been heard.

Court data is a public record published under the open justice principle. It is not published under a Creative Commons licence; we use it under the same principle any member of the public would use to inspect a court list.

State building regulators publish licensed contractor registers as open data. QBCC (Queensland) and NSW Fair Trading (New South Wales) both provide bulk-export datasets that Company Radar ingests continuously. Licence-level events — a new licence granted, an upgrade to a higher licence class, a licence cancellation, or the outcome of a disciplinary proceeding — are surfaced as licence-change signals. Suspensions and cancellations are both classified as Warning: once a contractor loses their licence, they can no longer legally carry out regulated work, which materially changes counterparty risk on any open contract. Grants, upgrades, and administrative updates default to Info.

The Victorian Building Authority (VBA), now transitioning to the Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC), publishes the Building Practitioner Register as a weekly-refreshed open data CSV. The register covers 19 limitation types across builder, building surveyor, demolisher, designer, and inspector categories. Company Radar ingests this dataset and detects changes between successive snapshots: status changes (a practitioner suspended, cancelled, surrendered, or reinstated), limitation scope changes (practice scope expanded or contracted), and practitioners silently removed between snapshots.

Coverage note: approximately 65.3% of registrations are sole traders without an ABN or ACN on record. Entity linkage is only possible for the remaining ~34.7% of registrations. Signals only render where we can match a registration to a known entity by ABN or ACN.

Consumer and Business Services (CBS SA) administers South Australia's Occupational Public Register, which lists active and historic licences across 12 occupational classes: builders and building work contractors, plumbing and gas fitters, electrical workers, labour hire providers, conveyancers, land agents, land sales representatives, property managers, second-hand motor vehicle dealers, security and investigation agents, designated rooming house proprietors, and tobacco retailers and wholesalers. Company Radar ingests each class separately and detects changes between successive snapshots — status changes, new disciplinary actions, new assurances of compliance, and enforceable undertakings.

Coverage note: the SA register does not publish licensees' ABNs or ACNs. SA signals currently surface in the Recent signals feed and link directly to the licence record. They do not yet appear on individual company pages; a future name-matching plan will resolve SA licensees to known entities where possible.

ASIC records four registration-level events that are material to anyone monitoring a company: a new company registration (a potential new counterparty or competitor), a company name change (which can mask continuity of obligation), a voluntary deregistration (company wound down in good standing), and a strike-off or administrative deregistration (forced removal, often without formal winding-up). The severity reflects the likely counterparty risk: a name change or new registration is Info; a deregistration is Critical because it means the company has ceased to legally exist.

ASIC maintains a public register of persons disqualified from managing corporations or banned from providing financial services. Company Radar monitors this register for changes to existing entries (status updates, extended periods, authority changes) and for new entries. Because directorships themselves are not freely available in bulk, this signal fires when a monitored company is associated with a named disqualified person — not against every company a banned person may have touched historically.