Hi,
I’ve used multiple rest API to get companies information, and they always seem to be 1 or to fields in common. Shouldn’t the field date_of_creation be changed to incorporation_date as it makes the description more accurate because companies could have formed before it was incorporated.
Kind regards,
Jordan
Companies may also be registered at CH and not incorporated, as prescribed in Company law, so if the member was date_of_incorporation, that would be inaccurate and misleading. In this case, date_of_registration is better, but then we’re faced with two member names which are mutually exclusive. Nasty.
We have taken a very deliberate and determined approach with members naming, so that when you read your own client code or look at logs, the member names are self-documenting. Our view is that documentation doesn’t end with the Developer Hub!
The decision was therefore made to use a neutral member name for the date the company was created at Companies House. We did consider “start_date” and similar names, but they really were confusing, for the reason you give: the company my have started before it became a legal entity at Companies House.
Regards
Could you please confirm if the date_of_creation is the date the company was registered in the companies house?
If so, is there a field that provides information on when the company actually started trading?
Thanks