Ok, so we got stuck with this and because it seems a lot of people want up to date financial info we set about resolving it.
The problem: The information we get from the API (which we love) only provides basic information, not financial information which was disappointing.
The solution: However, Companies House do hold financial information such as "Cash at Bank" and it is available historically.
The next problem: This information is only available in either a daily download or a monthly download. A complexity: Each download contains HTML or XBRL files - one for each company. Complexity Solution: create a process that reads these files for the financial information we need.
We created a few different applications for this and eventually agreed on one. We then downloaded all 12 bulk files with financial information dating back two years and began to process them.
Solution: We then put an interface together to allow anyone to lookup financial information on one or more companies without having to go through the process - you can try it out here https://www.contactenhance.com.
P.S. We mapped corporate domains to the company names so you can use a company email address, domain or name to fetch the information you need instead of having to look it up.
P.S.S. We then added more information from Twitter, Glassdoor and a few others to provide lots of insight on the companies you are researching without the hassle of having to collect it manually.
Think of it as endole on steroids or google for corporate emails.
(If you would like to know how we created the process, technical coding, debugging etc, happy to share, just let me know)
