Hi

Most accounts at Companies House are filed using software, rather than using paper or the online service, WebFiling and most company directors will be aware that, each year, every company must file a set of accounts with Companies House. This is required whether the company is trading or not. 

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill 2022

When the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill is passed, along with many other changes such as identity verification, Companies House will gain the power to mandate how companies file their accounts. 

The vision is to create a single, cost-effective, sustainable way of filing accounts, which will be secure, transparent, and traceable. They also want to enable much wider tagging of accounts data. This means that the data is electronically tagged and categorised to a specialist accounts taxonomy, making it easier for users of accounts to access, analyse and search for data.

Using software is efficient and reliable

There are several ways for a company to file its accounts. As accounts become more complex, using software to file them is increasingly attractive. 

Companies House has already begun work to move to software-only accounts filing, which will see the removal of all other filing routes for accounts. They are currently working with software companies to bring in these changes and to create a solution for more complex package accounts, which can currently only be filed using paper.

What you need to do

After the Bill has been passed and achieves Royal Assent, we’ll let you know the timetable for the incremental roll-out of the change to software-only filing.

But there’s no need to wait.

The software is already available for you to make the change now. Over 65% of companies already use software filing as their preferred method.

If you’re a company director and you use an accountant to file your annual accounts, talk to them about software filing to make sure you’re compliant with the upcoming changes. Ask what software they’re already using to file accounts with HMRC. 

If you’re a self-filer, and you do not currently have software, you’ll need to find the right software package for your needs before web-based and paper filing are no longer available for your accounts type. If you need help with that please book a complimentary call with me.

Once the timeline has been agreed, we’ll make sure that you have time to make the change before it's a legal requirement.

Companies House has made a strategic commitment to become a fully digital filing service. This means it needs a fit-for-purpose way to improve the quality and value of information on the register to fulfil its  priorities of delivering legislative reform and preventing economic crime.

Noel Guilford