1. What a check is, and is not
You give Sumitt an ABN, an ACN or a business name. Sumitt resolves it on the Australian Business Register, pulls the facts below from the sources listed, and applies fixed rules to land on a band. It is business risk information about the business you are quoting. It is not a credit report, not a credit score and not a recommendation. Sumitt never tells you to take or refuse a job.
2. Where the facts come from
- ABN Lookup (Australian Business Register), live at the moment of the check: ABN status and the date it took effect, entity type, GST registration, registered business names, main business location (state and postcode). Shown as extracts under the ABR web-services agreement; not endorsed by the Australian Government.
- ASIC Company dataset (data.gov.au, CC BY 3.0 AU), a weekly snapshot refreshed each Tuesday: company status (registered, under external administration, strike-off action, deregistered), registration and deregistration dates. Every fact from it carries the snapshot date. If data.gov.au cannot be reached, a check falls back to Sumitt’s own copy of the last snapshot it saw for that company, labelled as such on the report, and only while that copy is less than 14 days old; past that the source reads as unavailable. ASIC Connect is the real-time source and is linked from every company report.
- QBCC Licensed Contractors Register (data.qld.gov.au, CC BY 4.0), for Queensland businesses: licence number, classes, grade and financial category. The published register lists current licences only and carries no suspension or disciplinary status, so a check can say “licensed for these classes” or “no current licence found” but never “suspended” from this source. The myQBCC register shows status and history live and is linked.
- Links only: ASIC published notices (insolvency notices), the NSW licence check, the Victorian Building Practitioner Register and the WA and SA licence registers. Sumitt does not copy these registers; it sends you to them with the right name in hand.
- Commercial bureau (when switched on for your account, shown on the report as its own source): registered payment defaults, court judgments, licence status and ATO-disclosed business tax debts. ATO tax-debt information only ever reaches Sumitt through a registered credit reporting body; Sumitt never sources it on its own.
- Your own Sumitt ledger (first-party): the progress claims you have already made on this business through Sumitt and how they were paid. These are your own business records shown back to you. They never come from, and are never shared with, any other Sumitt user or any outside source.
3. The rules, exactly as the software applies them
Red, if any of these is true:
- The ABN is cancelled.
- The company is under external administration (or a controller is appointed), strike-off action is in progress, or the company is deregistered.
- A licence on the report is suspended.
- The bureau reports a registered payment default, a court judgment, or an ATO tax-debt flag.
Amber, if none of the red rules is true and any of these is:
- The ABN has been active for less than 2 years.
- The business is not registered for GST and the job you are pricing is $75,000 or more (the GST registration turnover threshold; configurable).
- The ASIC company status is “not active”, or is any other status its source reports as adverse.
- The ASIC company status differs from the last snapshot Sumitt saw for this company, and Sumitt first saw that difference within the last 90 days. The dataset does not publish the date ASIC changed a status, so the report says what Sumitt saw and when it first saw it, never an ASIC change date.
- A licence on the report is expired, conditional or cancelled, or carries any other status the source does not report as current.
- On your own Sumitt ledger, the business averages more than 45 days to pay a progress claim across 2 or more paid claims, or currently has a claim of yours unpaid 30 days or more after you made it. First-party reasons can make a band Amber but never Red, and they are only counted for companies.
Green: none of the above, and every primary source returned. Not enough information: no red or amber reason, but a primary source (the ABR, the ASIC company dataset for any business whose ABR record carries a nine-digit ASIC identifier, whether an ACN or an ARBN, or a commercial bureau where one is switched on for your account) did not return, or a company with an ACN is not yet in the ASIC weekly snapshot. Government bodies hold no ACN and are not on the ASIC companies register at all, so for them the ABR is the only primary source and the ASIC dataset is not queried. Foreign companies and other bodies registered with ASIC under an ARBN rather than an ACN (the ABR shows the ARBN in the same field) are checked against the ASIC company dataset too, because that dataset also lists registered bodies: if it holds a row for the body, the company status rules above apply to it in full, and if it holds none, the absence is noted on the report but not counted against the business, because a registered body can be legitimately absent from that file. A CCIV sub-fund is the same again: the ABR shows its ARFN in that field, the dataset does not list sub-funds at all, and so its absence is likewise noted but never counted against the business. A CCIV itself (the vehicle, not one of its sub-funds) is the opposite case: even though the ABR types it the same way as a foreign body, it is registered as a company and holds an ACN, so it is treated like any other company — if it is not yet in the snapshot, that is not enough information, not a clean bill. “Not enough information” is shown in its own colour because the absence of adverse data is not a clean bill. A source Sumitt cannot reach is Sumitt’s problem, not theirs: it is never turned into a reason against the business, and a check held at “not enough information” by an outage is not counted against your included checks.
Red reasons always outrank amber ones. Every reason on a report shows the fact, the source, when Sumitt retrieved it, and the snapshot date where the source is a snapshot.
These rules are versioned, and every check records the version it was banded under. If Sumitt corrects or improves a rule, a stored report is re-read under the current rules the next time it is viewed, using only the evidence it already holds, and the report says so whenever that changes the band. Nothing else re-reads a stored result: the evidence stays exactly what was retrieved at check time, and the passage of time alone never moves a stored band.
4. Companies get the full check; individuals get a limited one
Facts about a company are not personal information. Facts about a person are, and compiling information about an individual’s creditworthiness is the business of licensed credit reporting bodies, not Sumitt. So when the ABN belongs to an individual or sole trader, a partnership, or a trust with no ACN, the report is a limited check: ABN status and age, GST status, business names, licence listing, and the links to check the registers live. No adverse flags of Sumitt’s own derivation are ever shown or counted for an individual, and no bureau lookup is made.
Your own ledger follows the same rule. For an individual or sole trader the report may show a neutral line of your own paid history with them (your records, shown back to you), but no first-party amber is ever shown or counted toward an individual’s band.
5. What Sumitt never does
- Never uses consumer credit files, repayment history or consumer scores. Commercial and public sources only.
- Never shows a number that looks like a score. A band with reasons, nothing else.
- Never scrapes registers whose terms forbid it (ASIC published notices, NSW Fair Trading, the Victorian register). Those are links.
- Never lets the AI invent a fact. The Foreman may reword the listed reasons into a sentence; it is checked against them and falls back to a fixed template if it adds anything.
- Never fails a whole check because one source is down. A dead source appears as an “unavailable” row, and a missing primary source keeps the band at “not enough information”.
6. Watching a business
A watch re-runs the same sources weekly (Wednesdays, after ASIC’s Tuesday refresh) and raises an alert only on a material change: ABN status, company status, a licence appearing or disappearing or changing status, a new bureau item, or the band itself moving. The same change is never raised twice.
7. Something wrong? Dispute a fact
Every fact names its source. If it is wrong, correct it at the source first (the report links there), then use “Dispute this data” on the report or email support@sumitt.com.au. While a dispute is open the item is held back from the band and marked as disputed on the report. We review disputes as soon as we can, and within 30 days. If a source withdraws a record, Sumitt deletes its copy on notice. If you are the business (or the person) a report is about and you believe a fact is wrong, the same address works for you: tell us the ABN and the fact, and we will hold it back while we check with the source.
8. The terms you accept before the first check
You use the information only to assess a business you are quoting or contracting with, in your own business; you do not republish, resell or scrape it, and you do not use it for consumer credit, marketing or employment screening. Where a commercial bureau supplies data, its terms flow down to you. The full wording is shown in the app the first time you run a check, and again whenever it changes.