Qualifying by Revenue Band (UK Companies Act Thresholds)
How UK Companies Act 2024 filing thresholds give you a free, reliable, legally-verifiable B2B segmentation.
UK-registered companies self-declare their size band every year in their Companies House filings. These bands — defined by the Companies Act 2006 (as amended by SI 2024/583) — are the most reliable, most verifiable B2B segmentation available for free.
The thresholds
A company qualifies for a band by meeting at least two of three criteria:
| Band | Turnover | Balance sheet | Employees |
|---|---|---|---|
| Micro-entity | ≤£632K | ≤£316K | ≤10 |
| Small | ≤£10.2M | ≤£5.1M | ≤50 |
| Medium | ≤£36M | ≤£18M | ≤250 |
| Large | > any of above |
These thresholds were updated by SI 2024/583 (April 2024). Any older source quoting £10.2M as small is still current; anything quoting the pre-2024 £632K-ish micro threshold for small-company accounts needs updating.
A worked example: qualifying a UK SaaS target list
Say you have a list of 1,000 UK SaaS companies surfaced through your ICP work. Applying the revenue bands trims this into actionable groups fast.
- Pull each Companies House record. Expect around 95% of Ltd-registered SaaS companies to have filed at least one set of accounts.
- Discard dormant entries and those with strike-off notices. Typically 5 to 10% of a raw list.
- Segment the remainder: perhaps 60% micro, 30% small, 8% medium, 2% large for a typical UK SaaS cohort.
- Match each segment to a pricing tier and outreach script. Micro-entities get the £50-tier pitch with a focus on time-saved. Small companies get an ROI-focused pitch with specific customer examples. Medium companies get a capability-focused pitch with case studies and integration detail.
- Park large companies for a named-account sales motion, not outbound.
This segmentation is free, verifiable, and defensible. Every subsequent conversation benefits from it: you are not pitching enterprise at a sole-trader, and you are not under-pricing at a medium company.
Why revenue bands beat “SMB / mid-market / enterprise”
- Legal defensibility. These are statutory thresholds. A company self-declared them.
- Verifiable. Companies House is public.
- Aligned with affordability. A micro-entity cannot pay £300/mo per seat. A medium company expects more features.
- UK-native. US-style bands are wrong here.
How filing behaviour reveals band maturity
Reading a company’s filing behaviour gives you more than just a band number. The way a company files tells you about its maturity and its buying posture.
- Micro-entities filing full accounts voluntarily often indicate a company planning to raise external capital — they prefer transparency. These are frequently good buying-posture candidates for growth tooling even at low revenue.
- Small companies late to file often signal operational stress. Six weeks late is unusual; six months late is a strike-off risk. Time your outreach carefully.
- Band-crossing filings — from micro to small, or small to medium — are among the strongest “growing” signals in UK B2B. The company has either grown turnover through the threshold, or hired past the employee ceiling, or both. Procurement teams often use band transitions as tooling review triggers.
- Medium companies filing early often indicate a well-run finance function. They respond to ROI language and detailed case studies.
- Repeated amended filings indicate internal accounting turbulence. Frequently flags a finance-stack review in motion.
Treat filing patterns as secondary signals layered on the primary band data. Each adds confidence to the buying-posture read.
How to use them in qualification
- Pull the band from Companies House filings
- Match to your pricing tier (your £50 plan for micro, £100 for small, etc.)
- Filter out mismatches at the top of funnel, not after demo
- Spot-check declared revenue in the first conversation if band matters
Edge cases
- Recent incorporations may not have filed accounts yet → no band data. Treat as small-by-default until filed.
- Band-crossing events (a company grew from small to medium mid-year) → pick the band declared in their most recent filing
- Group companies — the band applies at the individual legal-entity level. Group totals are separate.
- Dormant companies — skip entirely. Not buyers.
Common qualification mistakes
- Taking self-declared revenue at face value. Companies sometimes under-declare to stay in a lower filing band. A spot-check against employee count or balance sheet catches obvious mis-declarations.
- Ignoring non-Ltd entities. Sole traders and ordinary partnerships do not appear in Companies House. If your ICP includes these, build a separate qualification path.
- Qualifying once and forgetting. Bands change. A company that qualified as small last year may now be medium, with a different buying profile. Re-qualify every twelve months.
- Using global revenue for UK-subsidiary qualification. A US parent with a small UK subsidiary should be qualified on the subsidiary’s UK filing, not the group-level figures. Selling tools to the UK subsidiary is a different conversation.
- Qualifying before signal. Band tells you affordability; it does not tell you intent. Run band as a filter, not as a discovery mechanism.
Frequently asked questions
What if a company refuses to share its band in conversation? Companies House is public; the band is visible. You do not need the prospect to tell you. Use the public filing and focus the conversation on value, not verification.
How does the small-company audit exemption affect this? It does not much. The statutory bands are about filing categories, not audit requirements. A small company is small whether or not it elects audit.
Is it legal to use Companies House data to build qualification logic? Yes. Companies House data is published under the Open Government Licence. Commercial reuse is explicitly permitted. Respect the API terms and attribute where required.
How do bands translate for charities and CICs? Charities and CICs have different filing requirements. Treat them as a separate segment with their own thresholds (Charity Commission for charities, separate CIC regime for CICs). Do not force-fit Companies Act bands on them.
LeadKing’s approach
LeadKing’s B1–B4 pricing maps directly to Companies Act bands (B1 = micro, B2 = small under £2M, B3 = small £2–£10.2M, B4 = medium+). We read Companies House filings to spot-check self-declared revenue. Mis-declaration above 10% triggers a review.