Background-check new HubSpot companies before you sign

When a new company is created in HubSpot, I want a background check run on it before anyone gets far enough to sign a contract. Trigger this on the HubSpot webhook for company creation. This is judgement work rather than a fixed lookup, so build it as an agent workflow.

Start from the new record. Take the legal name and the website domain off it, along with the address the rep entered and the country if there is one. If the webhook only hands you an identifier, or the record otherwise needs resolving, use HubSpot Search Companies to find it first. If the record already carries a verification outcome and a recent verification date, stop and do nothing, because it has been checked before.

Look the entity up on the public company registry for its jurisdiction. I will give you the registry search URL for each of the countries we sell into. Use Steel Scrape Webpage to open the listing, because registry sites are javascript heavy and block plain scrapers, and a real cloud browser is what actually gets the page to render. Read back four things: the entity status, meaning active, dissolved, in liquidation or struck off, the incorporation date, the registered address, and the listed directors.

Matching the name is the hard part. What the rep typed into the CRM is usually a trading name while the registry holds a legal name, so set aside suffix noise such as Ltd, Limited, LLC, Inc, GmbH and Pty, and compare on the meaningful part. Do not take the first search result. Weigh the domain and the registered address against the record before accepting a candidate. If two entities score closely, or the only thing matching is the name, treat the check as unresolved rather than picking a winner, and say so plainly.

Then use Steel Scrape Webpage again, this time on the company's own website, to confirm it is a real trading business rather than a shell. Look for the signs of a parked domain or an untouched template: placeholder copy, a domain for sale page, a default theme with no real content, no products or services described, no contact or company details anywhere on the site. A thin site is not automatically a problem, but a parked or placeholder one is.

Capture the evidence while you are there. Use Steel Generate PDF on the registry listing so there is a dated copy of what the registry said on the day of the check, then file it in Google Drive with Upload File (Multipart) into our verification folder. Name the file with the company name and the date of the check so it can be found later without opening it.

Write the findings back to HubSpot. Use Create Note attached to the company record, covering the entity status, the incorporation date, the registered address, the directors, what the website check showed, and a link to the evidence file in Drive. State clearly anything you could not confirm. Then use Update Company to set the verification outcome and the date the check ran onto the record, so anyone opening it can see at a glance whether it has been cleared.

Only post to Slack when something is actually wrong. Use Send a Message to our channel when the entity is dissolved or anything other than active, when the registered address on the registry contradicts what the rep entered, when there is no registry record for the company at all, or when the website is parked or a placeholder. Say which company it is, what the problem is, and link both the HubSpot record and the evidence file. Companies that come back clean get verified silently, because the note and the filed evidence are enough and nobody needs pinging.

Use judgement on the address. Registries and reps format addresses differently, so a unit number written one way in the CRM and another way on the registry is not a red flag, whereas a different street, city or country is. Registry layouts also vary by jurisdiction, so read the page for what it means rather than expecting fixed fields, and where a jurisdiction genuinely does not publish something, record it as not available instead of guessing.