Gumshoe is Live — Australian Supplier Verification, Properly Done

Today we are making Gumshoe publicly available. It is a supplier verification platform built specifically for Australian businesses — and it is free to use for the core checks that matter most.

Why we built this

Australian businesses lose billions of dollars each year to supplier fraud, phoenix companies, and payment redirection scams. The most common attack is devastatingly simple: a fraudster registers a company with an ABN that looks legitimate, invoices your accounts payable team, and disappears. By the time you notice, the money is gone and the company has been wound up or transferred.

The public registers to catch this — ASIC, ABR, TPB, NDIS, APRA, ACNC — are authoritative. But checking them manually, for every supplier, every time, is not practical. A single supplier verification done properly takes 20–40 minutes. Most businesses do not do it at all, or do it once at onboarding and never again.

We built Gumshoe to close that gap.

What Gumshoe checks

A standard Gumshoe verification runs eight checks automatically, in parallel, in about 12 seconds:

• ABN status — Active, cancelled or never registered. Straight from the ABR.
• GST registration — Whether the entity is registered for GST, and for how long.
• Web presence — Does a legitimate website exist? How old is it? Does it match the entity?
• WHOIS / domain — When was the domain registered? Who owns it? Does the registrant match?
• Email infrastructure — Do SPF, DKIM and DMARC records exist? Is the domain likely to produce legitimate email?
• Address — Is the address valid? Does it match what they told you?
• Entity records — Business names, trading names, previous names from ASIC.
• Reputation / trust — Is the domain on known threat lists? Any HIBP breaches?

For deeper due diligence, you can add optional checks: insolvency and external administration, ASIC licence status, ASIC banned persons, financial advisers register, NDIS registration, ACNC charity status, APRA regulation, superannuation fund status, tax agent registration, fair work compliance, and more.

Every check produces a status (PASS / WARN / FAIL / NA), a label, and a detail line. Everything combines into a single assurance score — a number from 0 to 100 that reflects how much corroborating evidence exists for this supplier.

Phoenix Pattern detection

Phoenix activity is Australia's most damaging form of corporate fraud. A director winds up a company with unpaid debts — to the ATO, to employees, to creditors — and immediately opens a new company doing the same thing. Legally, it is complex. Practically, it leaves a trail in the ASIC records.

Gumshoe's Phoenix Pattern check cross-references directors against insolvency records, deregistered companies, and ASIC bans. When the pattern appears, it surfaces immediately in the result — before you pay an invoice.

What is free

All eight standard checks are free, without an account. Optional deeper checks are also free — you select them before you run. An account is free and lets you save your verification history, export reports, and email results to your team.

The Individual plan (0/month or 00/year) adds Phoenix Beacon — continuous monitoring for up to 10 suppliers, with automatic monthly re-verification and instant alerts. The Enterprise plan (00/month or ,000/year) adds Phoenix Shield with unlimited supplier monitoring, director cross-reference, and white-label reporting.

What is next

The data behind Gumshoe improves every week. We ingest updated ASIC registers, ACNC charity data, TPB registrant lists, APRA entities, and ABR bulk extracts on a regular cadence. We are working on FWO compliance data, AFSA bankruptcy records, and PPSR encumbrance searches.

On the product side: monthly card billing (individual and enterprise), API access for enterprise users, and deeper director network analysis are next on the roadmap.

If you run a small business, a finance team, or manage supplier relationships of any kind — start with a free check. Search any Australian business by name or ABN. The result takes about 12 seconds.

Questions, bugs, or suggestions — reply to any email from us or use the feedback button in the dashboard.

Uncommon Insights

Uncommonly, the Australian Taxation Office's (ATO) own data shows that 20% of ABNs are either cancelled or never registered, yet many businesses still do not verify ABN status before engaging with a supplier. Gumshoe's automated checks can now verify ABN status in real-time, directly from the Australian Business Register (ABR), reducing the risk of supplier fraud and phoenix activity.

While ASIC's registers provide valuable information on company directors and shareholders, they are not always up-to-date or accurate. Gumshoe's Phoenix Pattern detection check cross-references directors against insolvency records, deregistered companies, and ASIC bans, providing a more comprehensive picture of a supplier's legitimacy and reducing the risk of phoenix activity. This is particularly important, as ASIC's own data shows that phoenix activity costs the Australian economy billions of dollars each year.

Section 588G of the Corporations Act 2001 imposes a positive duty on company directors to prevent insolvent trading, yet many businesses still do not conduct regular checks on their suppliers' solvency. Gumshoe's insolvency and external administration check provides real-time information on a supplier's solvency status, enabling businesses to make informed decisions about their supply chain and reducing the risk of dealing with insolvent suppliers.

ASIC's Regulatory Guide 252 (RG 252) sets out the requirements for verifying the identity of customers and suppliers, yet many businesses still do not have adequate customer due diligence (CDD) and know-your-customer (KYC) processes in place. Gumshoe's automated checks provide a robust CDD/KYC framework, enabling businesses to demonstrate compliance with RG 252 and reducing the risk of dealing with fraudulent or high-risk suppliers.