1. How a record enters the database
A scheduled job runs once a day at 03:20 UTC. It fetches the Contracts Finder daily notice CSV for each of the three preceding days, not just the previous day, because the source sometimes publishes late. Each file is size-checked and hashed with SHA-256 before it is parsed, and the write is idempotent, so re-reading a day cannot duplicate its notices.
Fields are stored as published: release identifier, title, description, buyer name, publication date, procurement category, delivery region, disclosed award value, currency, contract start and end dates, CPV code and description, and the source URL of the original notice. Nothing is rewritten to look tidier, and buyer names are kept in the form the buyer published them, which is why the same organisation can appear with different capitalisation.
2. How a supplier is linked to a company
This is the rule that matters most, and it is deliberately strict.
A supplier is linked to a Companies House record only when the notice itself published a company identifier. There is no fuzzy name matching, no best-guess resolution and no probabilistic scoring. If a notice names “Smith Construction” without an identifier, this site shows “Published name only” and creates no company link at all — even though a search would return plausible candidates. The cost of that rule is coverage; the benefit is that a link on this site means one specific thing.
Of 80,793 published supplier entries currently held, 10,836 distinct company identifiers were published in the notices. The remainder are name-only and stay that way.
Identifier discrepancy flagging
A published identifier can still point somewhere unexpected. Before showing a link, both names are normalised: lower-cased, with “limited”, “ltd”, “plc”, “llp” and “the” removed and all non-alphanumeric characters stripped. If neither normalised name contains the other, the page shows an identifier discrepancy warning instead of presenting a clean match. The link is not deleted — the notice really did publish that number — but the conflict is put in front of you.
Charity links
A charity is attached to a supplier only where the Charity Commission's own record carries the same company number. Charity name similarity is never used.
3. How values are counted
A disclosed value is included in a total only when the notice states a value greater than zero and the currency is GBP or is left blank. Notices in other currencies are shown on their own record but excluded from GBP totals rather than converted, because no exchange rate on a notice date would make the sum mean anything more.
Notices with no value are counted as notices and contribute nothing to value totals. This is why notice counts and disclosed totals answer different questions, and why the two are always labelled separately.
What a disclosed value is not: a framework or multi-supplier notice frequently states a ceiling covering several suppliers, several lots or several years, and an amended notice can restate a value already counted. Totals on this site are sums of published notice fields. They are not audited spend, invoiced amounts or payments made.
4. How delivery regions are used
Regional comparisons use only the twelve named UK delivery regions as published on the notice. Notices marked national, or with the field left empty, are excluded from regional comparisons rather than being spread across regions or assigned to a default. Region pages state this, so a small regional count is a statement about what was coded, not about where work happened.
A delivery region is where the notice says the work will be delivered. It is not the supplier's location, the buyer's location, or where any money ended up.
ONS Census 2021 statistics shown alongside a region describe that area's resident population. They are context for reading the region, never a measure of the contract's effect on it.
5. Which pages get published
Not every row becomes a page. Two thresholds govern that:
- Supplier profiles are published only where a non-empty company number and registered company name both exist, and at least one held award notice actually references that company number. Companies that appear in the register but not in the award record get no page.
- Region × sector market pages are published only where at least one held notice falls in that combination. Empty pairings are not generated, which is why the market directory is smaller than the arithmetic of regions multiplied by sectors.
Report, region, sector, department and question pages are fixed views over the same records. They introduce no new data and no new joins.
6. What this record cannot show
- It is not all UK public spending. It is what Contracts Finder published as award notices. Procurement published only on other portals, spend below publication thresholds, and money moved outside a contract award are not in it.
- It is not a complete historical archive. Coverage is uneven across publication years. The year filter on the explorer lists exactly which years are present in the held record — treat any year not listed there as absent, not as a year with no procurement.
- Company status is as at a snapshot. The Companies House layer is a monthly bulk snapshot, so a status changed since then will not be reflected here. Every profile links to the live register record.
- Award activity is not performance. Nothing here measures whether a contract was delivered well, on time or at the stated price.
- Absence is not evidence. A supplier with no page may simply never have had an identifier published alongside its name.
7. Checking and challenging a figure
Every award record on this site carries a link to the original Contracts Finder notice, every company link carries a link to the live Companies House record, and every charity link carries its Charity Commission registration number. If a figure here matters to your work, open the source: that is what the links are for.
If you find something wrong, email corrections@asapventures.co.uk with the page URL, the field in dispute and the source showing the correct position. The corrections process explains what happens next. The data quality report measures the known gaps — missing values, missing regions and the limits of supplier identifiers — across the whole held record.