One in ten accounts rejected by Companies House

One in ten accounts filed to Companies House has been rejected due to basic
formatting errors.

The body, which holds records for all businesses across the United Kingdom,
has issued plea to businesses to have their accounts in order or risk hefty
penalties.

Almost 91,000 accounts were rejected between January and June, of these
almost a third due to filing incorrect statutory statements. Accounts for
periods before 6 April 2008 require different statements included. Companies
House rejected 33,349 accounts on this basis.

Other errors included conflicting duplicate accounts or missing signatures
from balance sheets.

If accounts are rejected close to the filing deadline, Companies House issues
an automatic late filing penalty of between £150 and £1500 for private
companies.

Kathryn Cearns, a member of the ICAEW’s Financial Reporting Committee, said
new legislation may have caused some of the errors.

“As we all know, it only takes one technical breach along these lines for a
company to incur a fine and put the directors in breach of their duties for
filing accounts.”

“Undoubtedly, some of this has been caused by the new Companies Act coming in
to force, but Companies House has also changed its own rules in some areas, such
as names/signatures of directors and where they need to appear,” she said.