We have been making many improvements to help automate the process of getting a company’s confirmation statement filed: Automating the generation of confirmation statement approval documents Filing the confirmation statement automatically Creating bespoke emails to be sent requesting confirmation statement approval This release now lets you use this same automation framework to automate the production of a company’s dormant company accounts and email them for agreement. There are many benefits to subscribing These automations are exclusive to subscribers of the software. This is just ..read more

A partnership business is one of the most common forms to run a business in the UK. There are several hundred partnerships currently in existence. The most common alternatives are the sole trader and limited company. Looked at positively, the business partnership model enables you to go into business with someone else without the perceived formality of a limited company. From a less positive perspective, with a partnership you’re losing some control of the direction of your business. That could pose particular problems later on if you don’t put adequate protection in place. Let’s look in tur ..read more

When one person holds shares jointly with one or more others, they are joint shareholders. That’s different from the situation where more than one shareholder each owns shares in a company in their own right. A joint shareholding is effectively co-ownership. The joint shareholders can include a combination of individuals, corporate entities or a mix of the two. Dealing with joint shareholdings and joint shareholders effectively can challenge a company. However, an increasing number of companies have joint shareholdings within their register of members. In some companies, such as many residen ..read more

How many shares should a new company issue? It’s a frequently asked question. There are several common patterns of share ownership in newly formed companies. However, there is also a great amount of flexibility and no absolute right answer on how many new shares to allot. In this article, part of our series looking at shares issue, we’ll look at the Companies Act rules on how many shares a company must have. We’ll explore a number of new company scenarios and some of the factors you’ll want to consider. We’d always suggest taking specific advice from your accountant or other professional a ..read more

The latest update this month enables users to effortlessly access and search a company’s filing history directly within Inform Direct. This integration streamlines company secretarial tasks, eliminating the need to switch between different software platforms. Below, you will find a glimpse of the feature’s core functionality and the simplicity it brings to viewing a company’s filing history.     View a full list of filing without the need to page Text search by name or description of the document Search by type and date View and download filings There are many benefits to s ..read more

The Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) allows smaller companies to set up tax-advantaged employee share schemes. Under an EMI scheme the company grants share options to employees to buy shares in the company at some time in the future. Like any employee share scheme an EMI scheme gives employees the opportunity to gain from the company’s long-term performance. This can help to incentivise employees to work better for the company.  However, there are tax incentives from using an EMI scheme for both employees and companies over certain other share schemes. Given the significant tax i ..read more

We’re delighted to be celebrating a milestone, with 400,000 UK companies now managed on the Inform Direct platform. It’s a joy for us to work with so many different accountants, property managers, law firms, corporate finance agents and other company formation and secretarial professionals to support exemplary company secretarial compliance for your clients. Over 2,000 firms of accountants already use Inform Direct to manage cosec work efficiently. We look forward to meeting more wonderful accountants at Accountex in London on 15 and 16 May, and demonstrating how our software can save you ti ..read more

The vast majority of companies actively trade. However, there are also over 500,000 dormant companies registered with Companies House. Dormant companies benefit from reduced administrative requirements: in particular, they don’t have to provide the same level of detail in their accounts. While that’s hardly a reason in itself, there are a number of good reasons why a dormant company may be formed or maintained. In this article we’ll look at the five main reasons why you might choose to have a dormant company: 1 To set up a company you intend to use in the future You might have a new trade i ..read more

A great number of businesses choose to incorporate as a company limited by shares. That contrasts with other forms of business, such as the sole trader, partnership, limited liability partnership (LLP) or company limited by guarantee. Most companies limited by shares are set up as private companies. However, in this article we look at the advantages and disadvantages of a public limited company. As well as those forming new companies, a proper evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of a public limited company will be needed for an existing private limited company considering converti ..read more

Our basic share certificate template is completely free to use. You can alternatively purchase unlimited use of one of our premium professionally-designed templates. Unlike other templates the Inform Direct software keeps a record of the share certificates you’ve created – so you can easily see which ones are active, and lets you cancel retired certificates. We also enable you to pull in existing shareholder information from Companies House into share certificates. We looked in another article at why you should be using Inform Direct to create and manage your share certificates. He ..read more