Before you sign with a new counterparty, ship on account or extend payment terms, fifteen minutes in the open registers is time well spent. In Ukraine most of it is free and open to anybody.
Below are five steps and, just as importantly, what the registers do not contain. The worst mistakes in checking a company are not made by misreading the data; they are made by treating an absent record as evidence.
1. Find the company by its ЄДРПОУ code
Start with the ЄДРПОУ — the eight-digit number a company receives when it is entered in the Unified State Register. It is its primary identifier: it does not change and it is not reissued to anybody else after the company is terminated. If you only have a name, search on that, but make sure you have the right company — similar names are constant, and the words “ТОВАРИСТВО З ОБМЕЖЕНОЮ ВІДПОВІДАЛЬНІСТЮ” open almost half of the two million entries in the register.
Look at three things: the company's status (registered, in termination, terminated), its registration date, and its legal form. A company registered last week is not a bad sign in itself, but it does mean there is no history to judge it on.
2. See who stands behind it
The register publishes the director, the signatories and the founders. Two questions matter: whether the person negotiating with you actually has authority to bind the company, and whether the management changed recently. A change on its own says nothing; a change immediately before a large transaction is worth asking about.
Look also at the field recording limits on representation. The register sometimes states outright that a signatory may conclude agreements only up to a certain amount, or only jointly with somebody else.
3. Check enforcement proceedings and insolvency
The Unified Register of Debtors shows whether enforcement proceedings have been opened against the company. Understand the limits of that entry: the register publishes the fact of a proceeding and its category, but not the amount owed. A company with one proceeding over an administrative fine and a company owing millions look identical in it. That is a reason to ask a question, not a finished conclusion — there is a separate article on it.
Insolvency announcements are published by the courts. An open case changes everything: payments can later be challenged, and your claim joins a queue.
4. Read the financial statements
Annual financial statements are filed with the statistics and tax authorities and are public. Look at net revenue, at the result for the period, and above all at equity: if it is negative, liabilities exceed assets.
The absence of statements is a signal too, but a weaker one than it looks. Not every entity has to file, and not in the same detail; the State Statistics Service's open dataset covers only part of the register. A gap by itself means nothing; several silent years at an actively trading company means something.
5. Account for what the register does not show
Since 2022 the open ЄДР dataset has been published without the registered address, without the activities and without the contacts of most companies. An empty address field does not mean the company has no address — it means the register did not publish it. There is more in the article on martial law and the open data.
The register likewise does not publish a VAT payer's individual tax number, and no open dataset shows current VAT-payer status. That is checked only in the tax service's own e-cabinet.
What it adds up to
None of these steps is a decision on its own. Together they give a picture clear enough to decide whether to ask for payment up front, shorten the terms, or simply go ahead. And all of them are public — you need nobody's permission to look.