Companies warned over accounts errors

7 September 2010

Companies House has said that as many as 10 per cent of all company accounts filed have been rejected because they were incorrectly formatted.

The accounting records of all UK companies must be submitted to Companies House.

Now the authority has urged companies to take extra care when filing.

According to Companies House, upwards of 91,000 accounts were refused between January and June of this year. Of which number over 30,000 were rejected because the statutory statements they contained were incorrect.

Accounts that are turned down near to the deadline date for submission may mean the companies involved could end up facing a late filing charge.

Kathryn Cearns of the Institute of Chartered Accountant in England and Wales (ICAEW) said that many of the mistakes which resulted in accounts being rejected were the result of changes to the regulations in the 2006 Companies Act.

She said: "It only takes one technical breach for a company to incur a fine and put the directors in breach of their duties for filing accounts.

"Undoubtedly some of this has been caused by the new Companies Act coming into force, but Companies House has also changed its own rules in some areas such as where the names and signatures of directors need to appear."