Stop printing, get e-filing with Companies House

SeedLegals has greatly reduced the time and cost of generating your legals, and now Companies House has made the process of filing these that much easier.

At some point every company needs to send information to Companies House from a simple share split to your funding round documents. These all needed to be printed off and posted which increasingly became a painful process, especially during Covid-19 and for lengthy documents such as Articles of Association.

The great news is that you can now file most of these documents using Companies House online filing services.

Benefits of online filing

By filing online, you’ll:

• Save your company time, money and loads of printing – and have a positive impact on the environment
• Receive confirmation from Companies House that they have received your documents
• Avoid having documents rejected through built in checks
• Be less likely to receive a late filing penalty
• Have access to additional online services with Companies House such as email reminders

It costs much less to file most of the documents online compared to paper. For example, it costs £13 to file a confirmation statement online, but £40 to file a paper form, not to mention the added costs of printing and posting lengthy documents.

Documents sent by post tend to take up to three weeks to process whereas those received with online filing should be processed within 24 hours. You’ll receive an almost immediate receipt of the documents and Companies House will notify you once they have accepted your filing. In the odd case that it is rejected it will be so much easier to correct and resubmit.

Register for online filing

1. Register here
2. Companies House will send your authentication code to the company’s registered office address. ( In response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, they’ve introduced a temporary service to request to have your authentication code sent to your home address.)

Once you’ve registered, you can then sign in to the online filing service to send all your documents.

What SeedLegals documents can I upload online or e-file?

You can use the upload service for documents relating to share capital, registrar’s powers, and change of constitution. For a full list of documents see here and take a look at our article on How to upload your documents to Companies House. Almost everything else can be e-filed.

Companies House accepts documents that have been filled out electronically and those which have been printed, completed and then scanned. They also accept signatures that are digitally generated, as on SeedLegals, and those which are typed directly into the form, scanned onto the form or hand-written in black ink.

The SH02, Written Resolutions and Articles of Association produced by SeedLegals can all be uploaded to Companies House whereas the SH01, CS01, AP01 and TM01 can all be e-filed directly with Companies House – just copy across the auto filled sections.

Create your SH02, Written Resolutions and Articles of Association on SeedLegals here.

If you’ve ever had to fix a filing error on Companies House using an RP04 you’ll know how painful the process can be, luckily you can now amend filing errors online for an SH01, CS01 or AP01 directly through Companies House instead.

Documents that have a fee

E-filing significantly reduces the fee you need to pay for filing these documents. If the document you are uploading has a fee, the cost will be shown on Companies House and you’ll need to pay this fee before uploading the document.

How to pay:

1. Head over to the webpage of the form you’re looking to upload and hit the payment hyperlink and follow the instructions to pay for your document.
2. After you’ve paid, make a note of the payment reference number. Enter the payment reference number in the service after you’ve uploaded your document.

What happens next?

You’ll receive a confirmation email to let you know if your document has been uploaded. It will then be processed and where accepted, registered with the date it was uploaded. Or – you’ll be emailed about amending the document if it wasn’t accepted.

If you need help creating your SH02, Written Resolutions or Articles of Association, you can easily do this on SeedLegals with unlimited support. SeedLegals makes it simple for companies to complete all the legal documents they need to grow, run and fund their business.

Questions?

Book some time in with an expert here or hit the chat button down below.