Perspectives · Company law and registers
Companies House confirms software-only accounts filing
On 9 June 2026 Companies House confirmed that from April 2028 every UK registered company must file its accounts in iXBRL through commercial software. The web and paper routes close for accounts filings, the option to file abridged accounts goes, small companies and micro-entities must file a profit and loss account with the ability to opt out of publishing it on the public register, and any company claiming audit exemption must give a strengthened eligibility statement. The date has already moved once, from April 2027, and the detail of the opt-out mechanism is still to come. This perspective is general information, not legal advice.
15 June 2026 · Company law and registers
The withdrawal
One filing route replaces four
Companies have been able to file accounts on paper, through the Companies House web service, through the joint filing service or through commercial software. From April 2028 only the last remains. Accounts must be prepared and submitted in inline XBRL, which means tagged, machine-readable financial data and no longer a document, and the software has to be bought or subscribed to. Other web filings, including the confirmation statement, are unaffected.
The content changes at the same time. Abridged accounts disappear. Small companies and micro-entities, which have been able to file a balance sheet alone, must file a profit and loss account, with the ability to ask that it is not published on the public register; Companies House has said the mechanism for that will follow. Every company claiming audit exemption must state on the balance sheet which exemption it is taking and confirm it qualifies.
The reforms were previously set for April 2027. The confirmation of 9 June 2026 moved them to April 2028 and framed the gap as a full accounting year plus nine months, which is the time a company needs to run one complete period under the new expectations and then file. That framing is a hint about how to use the interval: it is sized for a rehearsal. A date that has moved once invites the assumption it will move again, and it may, but the substantive requirements have been identical through both versions of the timetable.
The quiet companies
The exposure sits in the dormant part of the group
A trading company already has an accounting system, an accountant and probably an iXBRL filing to HMRC. The change is real for it but not structural. The difficulty sits with the dormant holding companies, the SPVs left standing after a disposal, the nominee companies and the property vehicles whose accounts have been typed into the web service each year by whoever holds the authentication code.
For those companies there is no software, no engagement letter and often no named owner beyond a habit. Across thirty or fifty entities in a private-equity or fund structure the arithmetic changes. Each one needs a filing route procured, an accounting reference date that somebody tracks, and a person who is answerable when the deadline arrives without the web service behind it.
Six facts per UK entity carry the whole change: the accounting reference date, the next filing deadline, whether it is dormant, whether audit exemption is claimed and on what basis, which software or provider will file it from April 2028, and the person accountable. The audit exemption row deserves particular attention, because a strengthened statement is a director putting their name to a specific eligibility claim, and the basis for it needs to live somewhere other than the accountant's memory. So does the decision about whether to keep a small company's profit and loss account off the public register, which will be made per company and per year.
In Alethia
The filing calendar sits on the entity
Each company is a record with its officers, ownership, documents and bank mandates attached, and compliance obligations with due dates hang off that same record. An accounting reference date and an annual accounts filing are exactly that shape: a recurring obligation belonging to one entity, with a responsible person and a completion state.
Alethia does not file accounts with Companies House. It makes readiness reportable. One report across the register shows which entities have a filing route recorded and which do not, which are dormant, and which accounts deadlines fall in the next quarter, while the audit trail shows who marked a filing done and when. The first time somebody asks how many of the group's companies still have no filing route, the answer is a number, and it arrives that day.
Questions
Software-only filing: common questions
Does the web filing service close in April 2028?
Only for accounts. Companies House confirmed that the web and paper routes close for accounts filings from April 2028. Other web filings, such as the confirmation statement, continue.
Are dormant companies exempt because their accounts are so short?
No. The requirement to file through commercial software applies to all UK registered companies, and dormant accounts are within it. A dormant company that has been filed by hand for years still needs a software route arranged before the change.
Give every company a filing route and a name against it
A full accounting year and nine months is enough to procure software, record an accounting reference date and an accountable person for each entity, and run one cycle before it matters. It is not enough time to do all three in 2028.