If you run a personal search company and you've searched for an "InfoTrack back office" or an alternative to it, there's a good chance you're looking for the wrong thing, and it's not your fault.
InfoTrack is a well-regarded platform. It's just built for a different customer than you. It helps solicitors order searches. You're the firm that fulfils them. Those are two separate jobs, and they need two separate kinds of software.
This post explains, fairly, what InfoTrack actually does, why a search firm needs something different, and what fulfilment-side software has to handle once the order lands on your desk.
What does InfoTrack actually do?
InfoTrack is a UK conveyancing technology platform for solicitors and licensed conveyancers. It lets them order property searches, ID and AML checks, SDLT submissions, and other services online, integrated with their case-management systems. It sits firmly on the conveyancer's ordering side of a transaction.
That's a real, useful job. A solicitor handling a property purchase has to pull together a stack of due diligence: local authority searches, drainage and water, environmental, mining where relevant, plus identity and anti-money-laundering checks on the client. A platform that lets them order all of that from one screen, inside the system they already use to manage the file, saves them genuine time.
So when people describe InfoTrack as ordering or aggregation software, that's accurate, and it's a compliment. It does the demand side well.
What it isn't is fulfilment software. The moment a search order leaves a solicitor's system and arrives with your firm, the ordering platform has finished its part. What happens next is yours.
Why does a search firm need different software?
A search firm needs different software because it does a different job: it fulfils the search. Ordering and fulfilment are separate functions, the way taking a restaurant booking is separate from cooking the meal. An ordering platform ends where your work begins.
Think about what actually happens after an order arrives. The address has to be cleaned and matched to a UPRN. The right request has to go to the right council, in that council's format, to that council's current contact. Providers may need placing for drainage, environmental, or mining data. Responses have to be tracked. The report has to be built. The invoice has to go out.
None of that is what a solicitor-facing ordering platform is for, and there's no criticism in saying so. You wouldn't ask your accounting software to drive the van.
So a search firm reaching for an "InfoTrack alternative" is often reaching past the real gap. The gap isn't a better way to order. It's software that knows how to fulfil.
What does fulfilment-side back office software have to handle?
Fulfilment software has to run the work from the moment an order lands to the moment the invoice goes out. That means parsing the order, UPRN matching, council knowledge for all of England and Wales, provider placement, response tracking, report build, and automatic invoicing — all connected.
Parse the incoming order
Orders arrive in every format going: a structured spreadsheet, a free-text email, a portal export. Fulfilment software should read each of these and pull out the data without someone retyping it. Manual transcription is time and error risk on every single search.
Match the address to a UPRN
The address a solicitor sends is rarely clean. The software has to resolve it to a confirmed UPRN and handle the minority that don't auto-match without it becoming a crisis. In our experience, roughly nine in ten addresses match cleanly; the rest are the ones that need real attention.
Know how every council works
This is the part generic and ordering software simply isn't built for. There are over 300 local authorities in England and Wales, and each has its own contact, fees, format, and quirks. Some need the admin ward; Rossendale is the example I always reach for. Some require a prior appointment. Some have migrated to HM Land Registry's national register for LLC1; most haven't yet.
Software that makes you configure all of that yourself, or lean on your team's memory, hasn't solved the problem. It's moved it.
Place providers, track responses, build the report
Drainage, environmental, mining where it applies: providers like Landmark and Martello often need placing from the same order. Responses have to be tracked so you know what's late before the solicitor rings to ask. Then the report builds from data already in the system, and the processor reviews it rather than retyping answers from an email.
Raise the invoice automatically
When the report goes out, the invoice goes with it, from the order data, at completion. Not whenever someone next has a spare ten minutes.
InfoTrack vs a search firm's back office: the honest comparison
InfoTrack and fulfilment software aren't competitors, because they serve opposite ends of the same transaction. The table below compares purpose, not features, because lining them up feature-by-feature would misrepresent both. One helps solicitors order. The other helps your firm deliver.
| InfoTrack (for solicitors ordering) | What a search firm needs (fulfilment) | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary user | Solicitors and licensed conveyancers | Personal search company / processor |
| Job in the transaction | Order searches and checks from the case file | Fulfil the order once it lands |
| Order intake | Places the order outward | Parses incoming orders in any format |
| Address handling | Address supplied by the solicitor | Cleans and matches to a UPRN |
| Council knowledge | Not its job | Every council in E&W, with the quirks |
| Provider placement | Aggregates the order | Places Landmark, Martello and others |
| Report build | Receives the finished result | Builds the report from captured data |
| Invoicing | Solicitor's side | Raises the invoice at completion |
Read it as two different jobs, because that's what it is. The reason "InfoTrack back office alternative" is such a common search is that nobody has been clear about which side of the line your firm sits on.
"For years I watched search firms assume the missing piece was a better way to receive orders. It almost never was. The orders arrived fine. What fell over was everything after, the council that changed its email, the report nobody had started, the invoice still sitting in someone's head. The ordering platforms were never going to fix that, because it was never their job. Fulfilment is a different trade, and it deserves its own tools."
— Valerie Bennett, Personal Search Veteran · June 2026
So do you need an InfoTrack alternative?
Probably not. If you're a search firm, you don't need to replace InfoTrack, because it isn't doing your job in the first place. What you need is software built for the fulfilment side: council knowledge, UPRN matching, provider placement, report build, and order-to-invoice in one connected flow.
That's the gap Valio is built for. Every council in England and Wales is pre-configured, including the quirks, so there's nothing to set up before your first real search. Most firms are live the same day.
If your back office is currently a shared inbox, a spreadsheet, and a couple of people who just know how the councils work, that's the thing worth fixing, not the way the orders come in.
For the wider picture, see the best software for personal search companies. To see how the fulfilment side actually works, look at the features or the page built for search firms.
Start a 7-day trial → · See how Valio works → · For search firms →