In the TSL sector, new contractors are an everyday occurrence. If you are planning a foreign cooperation, companies from Poland have a strong position in the European transport industry, which makes them natural partners in the field. Cooperation with a non-Romanian company carries certain risks, which can be circumvented by reliable verification of a potential partner. The guide on verifying a contractor from Poland prepared by Transcash.eu will help in this task
The guide on verifying contractors from Poland contains information on methods and sources of obtaining information on Polish companies, both on your own and with the help of business intelligence agencies. The creators of the guide have placed special emphasis on advice on verifying the shipping authorizations of Polish transport companies.
The guide opens with a section devoted to self-verification of a Polish contractor with the help of publicly available sources. The company’s website, its social channels or Facebook groups are sources available to everyone to check basic information and seek opinions about the contractor. However, the effects of such searches should be treated with caution, especially in the case of very bad or extremely positive reviews.
Public business registers provide basic information on companies registered in Poland. Using them is free, but requires time, and often – some skill and knowledge of procedures. Information on the companies is provided by the National Court Register. Data on sole proprietorships and partners in civil partnerships is collected by the Central Register and Information on Economic Activity and more broadly on civil partnerships is provided by REGON, the National Economy Register.
In the aforementioned databases you can find basic data identifying the company, such as the date of entry and possible deletion from the register, information about its managers, the amount of share capital, information about the liquidation process. transformations, demergers or mergers, as well as on the initiation of bankruptcy, arrangement restructuring or reorganization proceedings. All of the above-mentioned registers allow you to search their resources via websites, and many of them also allow you to view selected documents, including company financial statements.
The National Register of Debtors, which collects information on disclosed bankruptcy proceedings, restructuring proceedings, business bans and enforcement proceedings, can also be a useful source of knowledge about a contractor from Poland. Its contents can be viewed on the NRD’s public portal, where there is a search engine for entities appearing in the registry. Its counterpart in the private sector can be considered debt exchanges – also free and open to the public. They are run by debt collection companies and contain data on specific debts and debtors. The Transcash debt exchange is devoted exclusively to debts of TSL companies.
The „white list of VAT taxpayers” allows you to verify the tax status of a possible contractor. The registry stores data on entities registered as VAT taxpayers, unregistered and removed from the list. The search can also be time-limited to check whether an entity was a VAT taxpayer in the period of interest. The search is performed by account number, TIN or REGON number.
Public records are a reliable and trusted source of knowledge about a counterparty, although the information they contain is sometimes incomplete. An entrepreneur who wants to take a comprehensive approach to verification should review at least a few of them, which requires not only time, but also patience in using search systems that are not always intuitive and most important of all, in a foreign language. An alternative to public registries are commercial business intelligence agencies, which offer verification services for a fee. The data in the reports they produce largely overlap with those available to the public, but the additional information makes it possible to present the company’s activities in a more comprehensive and understandable way. Most intelligence agencies also have their own rating system, which allows them to give a rating to a company on an applied scale based on the data available about it. Thus, it is a kind of summary of the information collected in the report, which allows you to assess the activity and reliability of the counterparty at a glance. In our guide we have included agencies working exclusively in Romania that provide data on foreign companies and also those operating both in Poland and Romania.
Business intelligence conducted on one’s own or outsourced to a company provides a lot of valuable information of a general nature. However, in the verification process it is also worth taking into account the specifics of the industry with which the verified entity is associated. The conduct of transport activities is regulated by Polish and international law, and as such requires the possession of appropriate licenses and permits, which are:
Freight forwarding companies must have not only the above documents, but in addition also the so-called freight forwarding license, which is a license to perform road transport in the field of intermediation in the carriage of goods.
Another thing you should check when verifying a carrier from Poland is the carrier’s or freight forwarder’s liability insurance. Its role is to protect the holder in case of theft, destruction or damage to cargo. In Poland, having this type of insurance is not mandatory, but for many companies it is necessary when working with customers.
A lot of information about a carrier, including documentation on its activities, is provided by freight exchanges such as Trans.eu. They have their own rating systems issued on the basis of users’ experiences, which supplements official information with impressions of cooperation with a given entity, supported by real contact and transactions.
Reliable partners in business are priceless, and in order to get them you sholud verify the company’s situation before signing a contract. Only thanks to it can you increase the chance of successful and secure cooperation and minimize the risk of problems and fraud. In this task, entrepreneurs can assist themselves with business registries, both public and private, but also with industry knowledge and common sense, which tributes to the principle of “trust and verify.”
