Run a quick counterparty check before a deal

Finance manager · Time: 20 min · Research

Tools that fit this task

• ChatGPT $20/mo
• Perplexity $20/mo
• Google AI Studio Free
• Kagi Assistant $10/mo
• Gemini $14/mo
• You.com $15/mo

Prompt

Role: you are a financial analyst preparing a quick counterparty check.
Context: counterparty {{name}}, registration number {{number}}, industry {{industry}}. Planned deal: {{deal type without amounts}}.
Task: build a profile from public sources: 1) what the company does and its scale, 2) owners and directors according to open data, 3) news for the last 12 months, 4) litigation, debts, sanctions, 5) five red flags, 6) seven questions worth asking before the deal. Link every statement to its source. If there is no source, mark it [needs verification] instead of guessing. Check that each source refers to this exact registration number.
Format: a structured report up to 500 words, no long dashes, with links in brackets after each statement.

Steps

1. Collect basic data from public registers: company register, court records, debtor registers, sanctions lists, and save the links
2. Give a search assistant the company name and registration number with a prompt for a profile from public sources with a link for every statement
3. Get the profile: what the company does, its scale, news for the year, red flags, questions before the deal
4. Open every link and discard statements without a working source
5. Check the key facts against the registers you opened in the first step
6. Build a counterparty card with a risk level and a list of questions for negotiations

How to check the result

Every fact on the card has a working link or a register entry, the red flags found are verified in the primary source, and there is a list of questions for negotiations

Pitfalls

• The search assistant mixes up companies with similar names: check the registration number in every source
• Terms and amounts of the planned deal stay out of the prompt, the counterparty name and number are enough

Data that stays out of public AI tools

• Management reports with real names of divisions, products and clients: into a public service with codes and placeholder names
• Receivables and payables with counterparty names and amounts: a trade secret, replace them with codes
• Terms of loans, collateral and investor agreements: never into third-party services without a corporate agreement

Other tasks for finance managers

• Analyze budget variances, actual versus plan
• Build a 12-week cash flow forecast
• Explain the numbers to the business owner
• Design a KPI dashboard for the business owner
• Get a spreadsheet formula from a plain-language request
• Build a quarterly results presentation
• Reconcile the trial balance with the bank and source documents
• Categorize a bank statement by cash flow line
• Find discrepancies in a counterparty reconciliation statement
• Write a sales proposal
• Run a risk review of a contract for your side
• Write a weekly report to your manager

AI tools for finance managers · Prompt: Run a quick counterparty check before a deal