1. What a check is, and is not
You give Sumitt an ABN, an ACN or a business name. Sumitt finds it on the Australian Business Register and pulls the facts below from the sources listed. Then it 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. It gives ABN status and the date it took effect, entity type, GST registration, registered business names, and 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. It gives company status (registered, under external administration, strike-off action, deregistered), and 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. That copy is labelled as such on the report, and used only while it 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. It gives 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.
- Payment Times Reports Register (register.paymenttimes.gov.au). This is the Commonwealth register of what large businesses report, twice a year, about paying their small-business suppliers. Sumitt reads the workbook the register publishes for download, never its pages (the register’s terms of use forbid scraping tools). It keeps each business’s latest reporting period: its common payment terms, the number of days within which 95% of its small-business invoices were paid, and the share of those invoices paid more than 60 days after the invoice. Every fact from it names the reporting period and the date the register published. The Payment Times Reports Register covers large businesses only (over $100 million in annual income). A business with no listing is either below that size or has not reported; that is not a mark against it. A business with no listing gets no fact from this source at all. A latest report whose period ended more than 24 months ago is treated the same way, because the business has stopped reporting.
- Links only: ASIC published notices (insolvency notices) and the licence register for the state on the ABR record. That is the NSW licence check, the Victorian Building Practitioner Register, or the WA, SA, Tasmanian, Northern Territory or ACT register. When the ABR record names no state, the report says the state registers were not checked rather than guess one. 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 and shown on the report as its own source. It gives 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).
- 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. They are only counted for companies.
- The Payment Times Reports Register shows, in the business’s latest report, that it took more than 60 days to pay 95% of its small-business invoices (a 95th percentile payment time over 60 days), or that 20% or more of those invoices were paid more than 60 days after the invoice. Reasons from this register can make a band Amber but never Red, and they are only counted for companies. A listing on the Regulator’s fast small business payer list (95% of small-business invoices paid within 20 days for two consecutive reporting periods) is shown as a positive note and never moves the band. No listing at all adds nothing. It is not a reason in either direction.
Green: none of the above, and every primary source returned. Not enough information: no red or amber reason, but a primary source did not return, or a company with an ACN is not yet in the ASIC weekly snapshot. The primary sources are the ABR, the ASIC company dataset for any business whose ABR record carries a nine-digit ASIC identifier (an ACN or an ARBN), and a commercial bureau where one is switched on for your account.
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. 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, and the dataset does not list sub-funds at all, 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. The ABR types it the same way as a foreign body. But 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Compiling information about an individual’s creditworthiness is the business of credit reporting bodies, not Sumitt. So when the ABN belongs to an individual or sole trader, a partnership, a trust with no ACN, or any other business that is not a registered company (a club, an unincorporated association, a strata body), the report is a limited check. It shows 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. No bureau lookup is made. Councils, statutory authorities and other government bodies are not people, so they get the full check, like a company.
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 an AI write any part of a report. The one-line summary at the top is a fixed template that repeats the listed reasons word for word.
- 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). It raises an alert only on a material change. That means a change to ABN status, GST registration, company status, a licence appearing, disappearing or changing status, a new bureau item, or the band itself moving. Licences are compared licence by licence, so a register listing them in a new order is not a change. A source that could not be reached is never taken for one. A change is raised once, by the poll that finds it. If it goes away and later comes back, the poll that sees it return raises it again.
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. 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.