Confirmation statement vs annual accounts — what your company must file.

Every UK limited company has two recurring Companies House filings, and new directors mix them up constantly — usually because both feel like "the annual paperwork". They are entirely different documents with different deadlines and very different consequences.

Annual accounts — the numbers

Your accounts report the company's financial position: what it earned, what it owns, what it owes. For most private companies they are due at Companies House nine months after the accounting year end. (Your first set after incorporation has its own, slightly different deadline.)

Filing late triggers automatic penalties that start in the low hundreds of pounds and escalate the longer you wait — and they double if you're late two years running. The penalty applies even if the company owed no tax and did nothing all year.

Separately — and this is another common confusion — the accounts also feed your Corporation Tax return to HMRC, which has its own deadlines: the tax itself is generally payable nine months and one day after the year end, and the return (CT600) is due twelve months after. Three deadlines, two organisations, one set of numbers.

Confirmation statement — the details

The confirmation statement contains no financial information at all. It confirms that the company's public record is correct: registered office, directors, shareholders, people with significant control, SIC codes. It is due at least once a year — within 14 days of the end of your review period — and carries a small filing fee.

It looks trivial. It is not. Persistently failing to file a confirmation statement is one of the main ways companies get struck off the register — meaning the company ceases to exist, its bank account is frozen, and any assets it holds pass to the Crown. Directors have personally lost real money this way over a filing that takes minutes.

The pattern that keeps you safe

• Know both dates — they are public; anyone can check them on the Companies House register, and so should you.
• Treat the confirmation statement as a diary item, not paperwork. It's quick — it just must never be missed.
• Start accounts well before month nine. Nine months feels generous; it evaporates if records are incomplete or your accountant needs information in your busiest season.
• When anything changes — a director, an address, the shareholding — update Companies House at the time, so the confirmation statement really is just a confirmation.

For our clients, all of these dates live in one tracked system, with reminders ahead of each one. That is the entire trick: none of this is difficult, it simply cannot be forgotten.

Official sources: Filing your company's accounts (GOV.UK) · Confirmation statement (GOV.UK) · Late filing penalties (GOV.UK)