Every few weeks somebody asks you for the same things. Your trading name. A line describing what you do. Your website. A contact address. Your hours. Where you are. A short bio for a programme or a newsletter.
You retype it each time, slightly differently, and over a few years the description of your business on eight different pages diverges into eight different businesses. Then you move, or change a phone number, and you cannot remember all eight places.
A fact sheet fixes that. It is one page holding the details, in two versions, with a date on it.
Three things to say at the start. It is free and ungated, with no email required and no account. Using it has no bearing whatsoever on whether we would list a business. And it is not a standard, a schema or anything a third party will recognise; it is a working document for you.
What this is, and who it is for
This is for anyone who runs something small and keeps retyping the same details. It works whether or not you have a website. If you run a shop with a phone number and nothing else, the sheet is arguably more useful to you, because it is the only place your details are written down consistently.
It is deliberately short. Every field on it is one a check would need, and there are no fields added for completeness.
When you'll use it
- Filling in a form for a listing site, a market, a fair or a trade body.
- Writing or rewriting your about page. The about page post uses the sheet as its raw material.
- Sending a bio to whoever is putting together a programme, a newsletter or an event page.
- Onboarding with a supplier, a wholesaler or a payment provider.
- Briefing anybody who writes about you, so that they get the trading name right.
- Handing to someone covering for you.
- Working out what to correct when something changes, because the sheet lists where the details already are.
That last use is the one people underestimate. The sheet is as much a record of where your information lives as a record of the information.
The fields, one at a time, with what each is for
Trading name. Exactly as you use it, including capitalisation, spacing and any punctuation. Write down whether it takes "The" and whether it is one word or two. This is the field that drifts most and it is the one that makes you hard to find when it does.
Legal or registered name, if different. Some forms need it. Keep it on the private version if you would rather not publish it.
One-line description. What you make or do, who for, where or how. Plain nouns. This is the same sentence that should be at the top of your homepage, and if you have not written it yet, the ten-item checklist is the reason you need to.
Longer description, about fifty words. For the forms that want a paragraph. Write it once so you stop improvising it badly at eleven at night.
What you do not do. One line. Enormously useful on a form, and it prevents a chunk of wrong enquiries.
Category, in your own words. How you would describe your trade to a stranger, not the nearest option in somebody's dropdown. Note the dropdown options you usually end up picking too, since you will meet them again.
Website. The canonical version, with or without the www, however you actually want it written.
Public contact route. The address or form you monitor, plus who reads it and roughly how quickly. A business address, not a personal one.
Public phone, if you have one. A business line, a diverted number or a virtual number. Note the hours it is answered. This field is optional and it is fine to leave it empty.
Location. Town, region and country if you have commercial premises or serve an area. If you work from home, a town or district is enough, and see the never-publish list below. If location is irrelevant, write "online only, worldwide" so that you say the same thing everywhere.
Hours. Only if you will keep them accurate everywhere they appear. Wrong hours cause more trouble than absent hours, so an empty field is a legitimate answer. Opening hours are a promise makes the case at length.
Service or delivery area. Where you will and will not travel, or where you ship to. Another useful constraint.
Price signal. A starting figure, a range, or a typical project size. Not a full price list. Enough that a stranger can tell whether they are in the right place.
Lead time and current availability. With a date next to it, because this is the field that goes stale fastest.
How you take payment. Methods and terms, in one line.
Accessibility notes, if you have premises. Step-free access, width of the door, parking, whether there is a bell. Say what is true, including when the answer is that access is difficult. Real places, checked covers the physical side properly.
Photographs. Which images you are happy for other people to use, and where they are. Note who owns them.
Where you already appear. A running list of listings, profiles and pages that carry your details, with the date you last checked each. This is the field that saves you when something changes.
Last reviewed. One date, at the top or the bottom. Discussed below.
The private version adds a few working fields: your registered details, your reference numbers, your insurance and renewal dates, your domain and hosting renewal dates, the account names for anywhere you appear, and the removal or support contact for each of them.
The two versions: the public one and the private one
Keep them as two separate documents, not one document with some parts marked confidential. Documents get forwarded whole.
The public version is what you paste into forms, send to anyone who asks, and hand to someone writing about you. Assume that everything on it will end up on a web page you do not control, copied by another site, and cached somewhere for years. Only put things on it that you are content to see reproduced indefinitely.
The private version is your working copy. Registration details, renewal dates, account references, the contact you use to correct a listing, your own notes. It never leaves your machine and it does not go to a client, a designer or a listing site.
| Field | Public | Private |
|---|---|---|
| Trading name | Yes | Yes |
| Registered name and number | Usually private | Yes |
| One-line and longer description | Yes | Yes |
| Website | Yes | Yes |
| Business contact route | Yes | Yes |
| Personal contact details | Never | Yes |
| Town or region | Yes | Yes |
| Full premises address | Only if commercial premises | Yes |
| Home address | Never | Yes, as your own record |
| Hours, lead time, availability | Yes, if maintained | Yes |
| Price signal | Yes | Yes |
| Insurance, renewals, references | No | Yes |
| Where you already appear | Optional | Yes |
| Last reviewed date | Yes | Yes |
The line between the two is mostly about addresses, and which address is the public one is the post that untangles registered, trading, correspondence and service addresses if yours are not all the same place.
What should never go on the public version
This list is short, and it is the part of the sheet that matters most.
- Your residential address. Including when your home is the registered address of the business, and including when it feels harmless because your town is small. We never publish a residential address in the register, for anyone, under any circumstances.
- Your personal mobile number. Use a business line, a divert or a virtual number. A personal number published once cannot be recalled from the sites that copied it.
- Your personal email address. Something at your own domain, or a separate account, and a form is fine too.
- Anything identifying the people you live with. Names of children, schools, the fact that you are alone in a building at particular hours, photographs showing your door number or the view from your windows.
- Anyone else's details without their agreement. Suppliers, clients, subcontractors, the person who covers for you.
- Reference numbers, account identifiers and anything that could be used to impersonate you or take over an account.
- Anything you have not verified. Awards, memberships, qualifications, client names, founding dates. Do not add material to look more substantial. A sheet with a few precise fields is more useful and more credible than one padded with things you would have to defend.
If you are unsure about a field, leave it out. An absent field costs you a follow-up email. A published personal detail travels.
What a business must display varies by legal form, sector and location, and this site does not answer it; what your site has to say about who you are is the post that handles that question properly. The list above is not a compliance exercise in any case — it is about what travels once you publish it. And what never goes on a contact page covers the same ground for the page a stranger actually reads.
Keeping it current without it becoming a chore
One date. Put "last reviewed" at the top of the sheet and write the date you last read it through. That single field does most of the work, because it tells you and anybody you send it to how much to trust the contents.
Then pick a cadence and write it next to the date, so that future you knows what was intended. Quarterly suits most small businesses. Twice a year is fine if your details rarely move. The interval matters less than it being written down.
Two triggers should override the cadence and prompt an immediate review: anything that changes how someone reaches you, and anything that changes when or where you work. A new phone number, a move, a change of hours, a service you have stopped offering.
When something does change, use the "where you already appear" list. Work down it, correct each entry, and note the date you did. That is the whole maintenance habit, and it is the difference between a business whose details are consistent and one whose details have quietly forked.
If you keep the sheet in a shared document, be careful about link sharing settings, and remember that the private version should not be in the shared folder at all.
In Plain English
Write your business details down once, in two documents. The public one holds what you are content to see copied onto pages you do not control. The private one holds registration details, renewal dates and account references, and never leaves your machine.
Put a review date on both and a stated cadence next to it. Keep a list of every place your details already appear, so that when something changes you know what to correct.
Never publish your home address, your personal mobile, your personal email or anything identifying the people you live with, and never add a field to look more impressive than you are. Leaving a field blank is a legitimate answer.
Questions about the fact sheet
Is there really no email required?
None. No form, no account, no download gate, no partial version. Gating a template behind an email address on a site arguing that listings should not be transactional would be hard to defend.
Will filling it in help me get listed?
No. Listing depends only on the entry bar, and nothing you fill in, download or read changes that. If you are considering submitting, the submission page explains the process and is honest that most submissions are refused.
Should I publish the public version on my website?
You can, though most people do not need to. Its value is as the source you paste from, and the parts a visitor actually needs belong on your ordinary pages rather than on a document.
I have no website at all. Is this still worth doing?
Yes, and arguably more so. Without a site, the sheet is the only consistent record of how your business describes itself, and it is what you paste into every form and hand to anyone who asks.
The fields are all set out above, in the order you would fill them in. Free, ungated, no email, and no bearing on register consideration. The rest of the templates follow the same rules, and the section index is being findable.