Registrations and Filings with Companies House

Here we explain what filings need to be submitted to Companies House, the UK Registrar of Companies.

Registration

The first step to starting a company is deciding on a name, and then registering it at Companies House.

Starting guidelines on how to do this can be found from the Government’s own website, here:

» Registering your company

Once you have successfully registered your company, you should then get (within a few days) the following initiation (incorporation) documents:

1. A Certificate of Incorporation - that states when the company was formed
2. A Director’s Duties Statement - that briefs the Directors’ on their responsibilities
3. A Memorandum of Association - a legal document that defines the companies permitted range of enterprise and activities. It also holds details such as the company’s name, and who its shareholders are
4. A Statement of Capital – that states the number of shares the company has, and the amount attributed to each share
5. An Authentication Code – a letter with a code you will need to file the necessary documents on Company House’s website

Keep these safely! These are your important incorporation documents!

Filings

With the necessary initiation documents in hand - each year - you will then also need to remember to make the following two filings:

Records you will need to keep:

Companies House Document 1

• Annual Set of Statutory Accounts – (these are accounts that summarise your company’s financial position and performance. Because they must be filed, they are called Statutory Accounts)

Companies House Document 2

• Annual Confirmation Statement – (this is statement describes important details about your company, i.e. what it does, where its registered office is, people with significant control, etc.)

Accounting Reference Date

When you prepare your Statutory Accounts for the first time, you will also be given an Accounting Reference Date. This date is a year after the last day of the month in which the company is formed.

We recommend changing whatever Accounting Reference Date is to given to you initially, to the end of the Calendar year – i.e. 31st December. This can be done on the Companies House website.

» Change Accounting Reference Date

We know this may be out of sync with the Tax Year (the UK Tax year runs from the 6th of April to the 5th of April), but we prefer setting the Accounting Reference Date to the end of the Calendar year. It means you don’t have to do all your financial and tax returns and filings at only one time of the year – they can be spread out, over two separate, and far-apart dates. It makes things more manageable!

Further Information

You can find further information about Companies House and the filings you may need to return here:

» Companies House Website
» Companies House Web Filing Service