For practice owners and practice managers
Tracking Companies House deadlines across a whole client book
The problem is not knowing the rules. Every practice knows the rules. The problem is that the rules produce a few hundred separate dates, attached to a few hundred separate people, and no system in the practice was built to hold that.
How most practices are doing it right now
| Method | Where it works | Where it fails |
|---|---|---|
| A spreadsheet somebody maintains | Accurate on the day it was built. Cheap. Everybody can read it. | Drifts within weeks. Depends entirely on one person. Never picks up new incorporations. Nobody updates it in January. |
| Practice management software | Good at accounts and tax filing dates, which is what it was built for. | Rarely tracks whether an individual has personally completed something on the register. Deadlines for people are not the same shape as deadlines for companies. |
| Reacting to reminders as they land | Costs nothing until it costs something. | Reminders go to the client, not the practice. The ones who ignore a reminder are exactly the ones who need chasing. |
| Nothing formal | More common than anybody admits, and not a moral failing. | The first time you find out is when a client rings you about a penalty and asks why you did not tell them. |
Why it is a chasing problem, not a data problem
You can build the list. Any competent person with a week and the public register can build the list. What nobody wants is the week after that, and the week after that: rechecking who has acted, writing the third email to the same unresponsive client, and picking up the phone to somebody who does not want to talk about it.
That is where the work actually sits, and it is why the list decays. Building it is a project with an end. Chasing is a job with none.
One detail that matters more than it should. Whether a person has actually completed a step on the register cannot be reliably read from a single data field, so the check has to be done properly against the register rather than inferred. That is irritating and slow, which is precisely why the job gets skipped, and why an outside pair of hands doing it every week is worth something.
What an outsourced watch looks like
Weekly
Officers, PSCs and confirmation statement dates pulled from the Companies House public data. Every outstanding name rechecked against the register. Anything newly inside thirty days flagged, anything now overdue flagged harder.
Weekly, escalating
A chase sequence to the individual, sent under your practice’s brand and sign off, from templates you approved before a single one went out. Escalating in tone, not in volume.
Inside fourteen days
A phone chase on anything sitting inside its window. Email is for the compliant. The phone is for everybody else.
Monthly
A report to the practice showing movement rather than activity, an exception list, and a sweep that pulls new incorporations and appointments into the book automatically.
What it costs
Priced per practice, on the size of the book, never per director. Per director pricing punishes a practice for getting its clients compliant, which is the wrong incentive for everybody.
| Client book | Monthly fee | Term |
|---|---|---|
| Under 100 companies | £199 | Twelve month minimum throughout |
| 100 to 300 companies | £399 | |
| 300 to 750 companies | £699 | |
| 750 plus companies | £1,200 |
Invoiced on the 1st in advance, 14 day terms, bank transfer.
The three pieces of paper
Nothing starts before all three are signed, and there is no version of this where we skip them.
- Terms of service, on a twelve month minimum.
- A data processing agreement under Article 28 UK GDPR. Chasing your clients on your behalf makes us your processor, and a written agreement is mandatory.
- Written brand authority to contact your clients in your name. Separate from the data processing agreement, and non negotiable. Without it we would be contacting strangers on your behalf, and the reputational risk of that lands on you rather than us.
What we do and do not do. Director Filing Desk is not an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, an accountancy firm, a filing agent or a company secretary. We do not carry out identity checks and we never will. We watch a list of company numbers on behalf of accountancy practices, spot what is due, and chase the people who have not acted. Nothing here is legal or tax advice. Always confirm the current position at GOV.UK.
Start with the free report
Send a list of client company numbers. Nothing else. Inside 48 hours you get one page showing how many of your clients are outstanding, how many are sitting in the PSC gap, what falls due in the next thirty days, and the ten most urgent by name. Free, no obligation, and useful whether or not you ever engage us.
Related
Written 20th August 2026 and checked against Companies House and GOV.UK guidance on the same date. Guidance in this area is subject to change, so always confirm the current position on GOV.UK before acting.