What are company accounts?

The summary of the financial activity of an organization over 12 months is called the Company accounts. They are prepared for HM Revenue & Customs and Companies House every year. A typical company account consists of the Balance Sheet, the Cash Flow Statement, and the Profit and Loss Statement. 

All the companies which are registered with Companies House submit their Company accounts on an annual basis.

Company accounts, also known as ‘statutory accounts’, outline the key financial data of business over the previous 12 months period. In the United Kingdom, it is essential for all the private limited companies to prepare their statutory accounts.

Statutory accounts provide reports about the financial activity and performance, while annual accounts are used to formulate corporation tax.

Copies of company accounts are always provided to:

  • Companies House
  • HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
  • Shareholders
  • Anyone who attends the company’s general meetings.

Why do we need to access Company accounts?

Company accounts give an insight into a company’s financial status. It is useful to review the company’s account beforehand to check their growth as a prospect while exploring for new customers.

Monitoring the financial status of companies, including customers and suppliers, ensures a piece of better information if they can fulfil their financial obligations or not. It also assists in making decisions on the terms of agreement of a current business relationship which is based upon the company accounts information.

It helps to understand the performance and finance of a company to identify the detrimental movements in cash flow. The limitation with company accounts is that they are annually filed. These annual filings can show the performance of a particular company for the previous 12 months picture, and this is not sufficient to understand how a business is doing at the current time.

This is the reason why a Company Credit Check is fundamental to understand the risks associated with a particular company and its calculated financial performance. By analyzing the latest financial trends beside different key risk aspects, a Company Credit Check shows an instant Risk evaluation to advice about the predicted performance of a company over the next 12 months period.

Where to find company accounts?

Previously, the shareholders used to receive the annual report through their broker or by mail. But now, a big thanks to the Internet, for making the financial reports search easier and quicker. Nowadays, almost every reputable company has an investor relations section available on its website that is easy to follow and a wealth of information. It includes an archive of annual reports of the company, often going back a few years.

  1. Company House:

The Companies House databases are searchable and designed to fulfill the needs of a large number of users who wish to interrogate the information online. Due to certain limitations of bandwidth and equipment, they are not promised to be a source of extent downloads.

About Website:

The information available at the website is an extract from the company register/ Disqualified Directors registers which are updated regularly. This means that the occasional inaccuracies may occur which are corrected as soon as they draw the attention. If something is spotted as wrong, the databases are correct. 

These websites carry out essential analysis on documents that are received to make sure if they have been fully signed and completed but do not have the legal right or potential to verify the efficiency of the information which companies send to the websites.


When Companies House assesses the accounts, it only makes primary checks on them, for example, to ensure if they are for the correct year, or the documents are appropriate, and if they have been signed or not. If they receive a complaint about the accounts which do not reassure the Companies Acts, they hold the duty to draw the company’s attention towards this matter and, if possible, ask for revised accounts that comply with the requirements.

 

  • Reporting Accounts:

 

The Reporting Accounts has an accounts area from where the financial accounts of more than 4 million registered companies/businesses. By using Reporting Accounts, the companies one is working with can be better understood. Moreover, the companies registered with Companies House can be accessed free by their free search service; while all the company records including top-level financials and in-depth accounts statements of the company can be accessed when subscribed to their service.

Reporting Accounts is easy to use, fast, and free of cost. It shows the results in the form of numbers in the on-screen graphs and categorizable financial tables which can be instantly exported to be used in spreadsheets as well as external applications.

The company reports include a top-level financial summary which is free of cost. The detailed financial reports can be viewed after free registration via the “financials” tab on the records.

Moreover, the registered users can download the on-screen numbers as well as the original documents filings of the Company House from the documents tab.

About Website:

Reporting Acounts is a free service to use, with unlimited searches of companies including basic information, registration details, director records, and key financials, available instantly- at zero charges. The graphed key financials of all UK companies can be found at Reporting Accounts including Cash at Bank, Current and total liabilities, and net worth. They aim to continue adding more free data along with director details, financial analysis, and related companies.

 

  • Gov.UK:

With Gov.UK, the essential details of a company can be accessed including its date of incorporation and registered address, resigned as well as current officers, images of documents, previous company names, mortgage charge data, and insolvency information.

The email alerts for a particular company can also be set up for free to get informed whenever a company renews its details.

Gov.UK has been working since 2010 to help people find and utilize open government data, as well as supporting the government publishers to control data. 

In March 2018, Gov.UK redesigned its website and launched a service named Find open data.

 By using this service, one can get access to data that is published by the central government, public bodies, and local authorities as well as links to download the data files. These help to create an account to publish data. 

 

Image Source: BigStock.com (Licensed)

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