Companies House: all-electronic filing

Companies House has announced that all incorporations and filings of annual returns, accounts and the main company forms for the standard company types will be electronic-only by March 2013. That means the end of paper forms.

In most cases web filing is much easier, though it does make it harder to make sure that filings are right and properly authorised: a mistake by the person filling in the online form will not easily be picked up. You do have to struggle though the arcane director/secretary authority codes involving the first three letters of your eye colour and Dad's forename.

It can go wrong, though. A client acquired a company and moved the office, and was given an incorrect online filing code. We couldn't file the change of registered office or new directors. Companies House would only send the filing code out by post to the old registered office...