Questions and answers

Short answers about who sees your checks, what the panel keeps, phones, links, sources that do not answer and getting help.

Short answers to the questions people ask most. If yours is not here, ask your Bouncer contact.

Your checks and data

Who can see my checks?

Your organisation. That is everyone signed in with an email address at the same domain as yours. If you are jane@example.co.uk, it is everyone at example.co.uk. The domain must match exactly: an address at sales.example.co.uk is a different organisation.
Only you, if you sign in with a personal address at one of the common free email services the panel knows, such as gmail.com, outlook.com or btinternet.com. Not every free email service is on that list. If you sign in with a personal address, ask your Bouncer contact before you start.
Never another organisation. Opening another organisation's check shows "This check does not exist."

Everyone in your organisation can open your checks, record a decision on them and run them again. Each decision records who made it.

Bouncer staff using the panel see only their own organisation's checks.

Can colleagues use the panel?

Yes. Ask your Bouncer contact to invite them. Each person gets their own account and their own invitation link. Colleagues at your domain see the same checks as you.

Can I edit or delete a check or a decision?

No. Every check and every decision is kept in a log that only accepts additions: nothing can be edited or deleted from the panel.

To change your mind, record a new decision. Both stay in the history, and the latest one is the one the check and the history show.
Run again creates a new check with a new reference. The earlier check stays as it was, and its decisions do not carry over to the new one.

How long are checks kept?

No retention period has been set, and the panel does not delete checks. If you need to know, ask your Bouncer contact.

What personal data does the panel hold?

Each check is stored exactly as the panel showed it, with what every source returned at the time. That includes the names, roles, appointment and resignation dates, nationality, country of residence, month and year of birth and identity verification of the company's current and former officers and of its current and former beneficial owners, as Companies House publishes them, and the listed names of any sanctions matches.

It also stores who ran the check, what they searched for, and every decision with its comment, its author and its time. For your account, the panel keeps your email address, the name given in your invitation and your password, which is stored as a hash, not as text.

Keep comments to what you need for the decision: they cannot be edited or deleted.

The printable report says it in the notice at the end: "It contains personal data from public registers: keep it only as long as your compliance purpose requires (UK GDPR)."

That applies to every report you print or save as a PDF, and to anything you copy from the panel into your own systems. The report's SHA-256 lets you match a saved report with the check recorded in the panel, which shows the same value at the bottom, under Sources.

Using the panel

I have forgotten my password

Ask your Bouncer contact for a new invitation link, open it and choose a new password. Your current password keeps working until you use the new link. An invitation link works once and expires after 7 days.

Can I use the panel on a phone?

Yes, in your phone's browser. On a narrow screen:

the navigation shows icons only;
some table columns are hidden, such as Search and User in Check history;
the language and theme buttons are hidden. The theme follows your phone's setting and the language is English, unless you chose others in that browser.

To switch language on a phone, open any check in Check history, select Printable report, choose EN or ES in the report's top bar, then select Back to the check. The panel keeps that language in this browser. The choice is saved separately in each browser, so changing it on your computer does not change it on your phone.

Can I use the panel in Spanish?

Yes. Select ES in the top bar, or in the top bar of a printable report. The sign-in page, the invitation page and their messages are in English only. This guide is also available in Spanish.

Yes, with people in your organisation. While the check is open, copy the address from your browser's address bar: it ends in #/check/ followed by the check reference. A printable report's address works the same way.

A link gives nobody access. The person needs their own account in your organisation.
Someone outside your organisation who opens the link sees "This check does not exist."
If the person is signed out, the link takes them to the sign-in page. After signing in they land on Check a company, not on the check, so they need to open the link again.

To share a check with someone outside your organisation, select Printable report, then Print or save as PDF, and send the PDF. It contains personal data: see the UK GDPR answer above.

Results and sources

What do I do when a source does not answer?

It depends on where you see it:

What you see	What to do
During a search: "Companies House could not answer (timeout). Try again in a moment; nothing has been concluded."	Search again in a moment. A search that fails is not recorded.
A check titled Register unavailable, with "Companies House did not answer (...). Nothing can be concluded about the company until the check is run again."	Select Run again.
A reason line that says Companies House "did not answer one of the queries for this company"	Select Run again. Until a check has every query answered, it cannot be approved automatically.
A source marked rate limited	Wait a few minutes, then select Run again. Companies House limits how many requests the panel can make, and everyone using the panel shares that allowance.
"GLEIF did not answer."	Nothing, unless you need the LEI. It does not stop approval. Select Run again later if you do.
"Sanctions screening was not run: the sanctions lists are out of date."	Run again does not help, because the lists are not downloaded for each check. Tell your Bouncer contact.

Every check is recorded, even when a source did not answer. Each Run again creates a new check; record your decision on the one where every source answered. The earlier checks stay in the history.

A source that did not answer is not evidence that there is nothing to find. See Data sources for what each source contributes.

The Help link in the panel's top bar opens the user guide.

I saved a link to the old help pages

This guide replaces the English-only help pages at kyb.bouncer.digital/docs/. If you saved a link to one of them, use the matching page here:

Old page	Page here
Overview	Bouncer KYB
Getting started	Getting started
Reading a check	Reading a check
Checks and results	Results and reasons
Data sources	Data sources
Questions and answers	This page

There is also a new page, Running a check. Unlike the old pages, this guide is also in Spanish.