Filing company accounts: your questions answered

Covering issues such as: the consequences of filing your accounts late; how to extend your filing deadline; when you can change an accounting reference date; whether you need to file accounts if your company is dormant, and more…

You may be able to apply to extend the time for delivering your company accounts to Companies House if they are delayed by

an unforeseen event which was outside the control of the company and its auditors or there are exceptional extenuating circumstances.

You can apply online to extend your accounts filing deadline, but you must do this before the normal filing deadline has been reached.

If you file your accounts late an automatic fine will be imposed on the company. The fines increase the longer you delay submission and the penalty is doubled if company accounts are filed late two years in a row. Public limited companies are also subject to higher tariffs than private companies. You may wish to refer to the Companies House Guide on Late Filing Penalties. 

As well as the civil penalty imposed on the company, failure to file the company accounts is a criminal offence and the company’s directors (and company secretary) could face large personal fines and even disqualification from the role of director.

Failure to deliver company accounts may also result in the company being struck off from the public register. Many people are surprised how quickly a company can find itself faced with deregistration. The process is detailed in section 1000 of the Companies Act 2006. If you fail to deliver your company accounts on time the registrar will be deemed to have

reasonable cause to believe that [the] company is not carrying on in business or in operation

As a first step Companies House will send a warning letter to the company registered office address. If it fails to receive a response from the company within 14 days, it will issue a second warning letter. If the company fails to reply to this second warning letter within a further 14 days, the registrar can issue a formal Notice of the intention to strike off and this will be published in the Gazette. Just two months after the publication of the notice, the company can be deregistered.

No. If your accounts due date falls on a Sunday or Bank Holiday you must ensure that you deliver your company accounts before this date or you will incur an automatic fine.

Yes. Currently, you can change the accounting reference date as many times as you like if it shortens the accounting period, although accounts reforms to be introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCT Act) will eventually introduce restrictions (see further details below). If the change is to lengthen the accounting period then the following restrictions already apply:

• Unless the company is in administration – you cannot change the accounting reference date to make the accounting period longer than 18 months.
• You cannot extend the accounting period more than once every 5 years unless your company is in administration or you have obtained permission from the Secretary of State or the change is to make the accounting reference date the same as a subsidiary or parent undertaking.

To change your accounting reference date you must apply to Companies House before you reach the current filing deadline. To apply you can complete paper Form AA01 or register with a free records management service like Inform Direct to submit the request electronically in a matter of moments.

The surprising answer to this question is ‘Yes!’ – but only in certain circumstances. When a Form AA01 is filed to change the accounting reference date, the deadline for filing company accounts is extended to the later of:

• 9 months for a private company (or 6 months for a public company) from the new accounting reference date; or
• 3 months from the date of receipt of the Form AA01.

In some circumstances therefore, shortening the accounting period may actually result in the company receiving additional time to file their accounts. Consider the following example:

However, note that Companies House do not look favourably upon companies that shorten their accounting reference period purely to gain additional time to file their accounts. Indeed, the ECCT Act will introduce a limit to the numbers of times that a company can shorten its accounting reference period, with the aim of preventing abuse of this procedure.

No. The same filing deadlines apply for dormant company accounts and regardless of the size of your company. You can verify the filing deadline that will apply to your next set of accounts by reading our guide entitled: “When are my annual accounts due?”

You must send a copy of the company accounts to:

• Every shareholder in the company;
• Every holder of the company’s debentures; and
• Every person that is entitled to receive notice of general meetings.

You will also be required to submit a copy of the company’s accounts to HMRC as part of your Company Tax Return. Where applicable, the Charity Commission or other regulatory bodies may also require a set of your company accounts for review.

Using Inform Direct you can produce and file both micro-entity accounts and never-traded dormant company accounts. If you are a subscriber using your own presenter code you can upload an iXBRL accounts file to Inform Direct, allowing you to electronically submit a wide range of company accounts including, small, medium, full and group accounts.

Whatever type of company accounts you are preparing, a simple one-step process allows you to produce prepopulated board minutes recording the directors approval of accounts – even when the company accounts were not created or filed using Inform Direct.

If you still have questions relating to company accounts preparation you may wish to look at our related guides: How to calculate the size of your company for year end accounts preparation and the Different types of limited company accounts available (as determined by your company’s size).

Earlier versions of this article were published in June 2015 and July 2019. The latest updates were applied in May 2025.