How it works

Outside in

Your systems know who is on your registers. They cannot know who is missing. Common Record starts from the other end: it builds a picture of what is trading in your area from public data, then compares it with what you hold.

The map of your area

Common Record reads open, licensed data about your council area. It joins records that describe the same place, so a café in three sources becomes one café with three pieces of evidence. Places only one weak source mentions get a low score and stay off the list.

Overture MapsAn open dataset of places built from several public and commercial sources, with a confidence score for each place.

Liquor licence listsEvery liquor licence in NSW and Victoria. A pub or cellar door with a licence almost always serves food. In Queensland, the list of hotels and clubs with gaming machines.

Development applicationsFit-outs and changes of use for food premises, from the NSW Planning Portal: a sign of what is about to open.

Business registerCompanies, trusts and partnerships registered in your postcodes, with their business names, ABN status and GST. Individuals and sole traders are never stored.

Address pointsThe state’s official address points, so every address on your register lands in the right place.

ZoningFor rate re-checks: the planning zone a property sits in. Zoning can support a finding. It never makes one on its own.

Land use mapsFor rate re-checks: what the land was mapped as being used for, when, and at what scale. The national ABARES map, and Queensland’s own mapping.

Charity registerFor exemption re-checks: whether an owner is still a registered charity.

Some sources wait on legal advice before we use them. When one is held back, the product says so. It never quietly counts it as having found nothing.

Your register

You upload one export, as a spreadsheet or CSV. Common Record guesses which column is which and shows you before it does anything. You fix what it got wrong. Then it matches each entry to the map by name, address and location.

We never need access to your systems. Nothing is uploaded until a data agreement is signed. Your register is stored in Sydney, used only for your council, and deleted when you ask or when the contract ends.

The list

Findings come in four kinds.

Not on registerTrading, of a kind you register, and nothing on your register matches it.

May have closedOn your register, and the public evidence says it has shut. Worth taking off the inspection round.

Worth a re-checkA rate category or exemption where the facts it rests on have changed.

OverdueA fire safety statement past its date, from your own records.

Each finding shows its evidence, where each piece came from and when, and how sure it is, in plain words. Officers mark each one as reviewing, confirmed, actioned or dismissed with a reason. A dismissed finding stays dismissed when the area is checked again. Every week the area is checked again, and new places become findings on their own.

See it in the sample report.

What it will get wrong

Some things. A business mapped at the wrong address. A café that closed last month and is still on the map. A property exempt on grounds the charity register does not show. That is why every finding is a prompt, not a verdict, and why the evidence is always there to read.

What it never does

It never decides anything, contacts a business, or publishes a finding. It uses public, open data only, and never scrapes a site that forbids it.

Request a pilot See a sample report