What must be filed at Companies House?

In practice, in the UK

Companies House and HMRC are entirely separate bodies with separate filings, and treating them as one obligation is one of the most common points of confusion for a company operating in the UK for the first time: filing accounts at Companies House does not file a tax return with HMRC, and paying Corporation Tax to HMRC does not satisfy any Companies House requirement. Beyond the annual accounts and confirmation statement, Companies House also expects prompt notification of changes to the company itself — directors appointed or resigned, a change of registered office, changes to persons with significant control — each through its own specific filing rather than folded into the next annual statement. Failing to file at Companies House has consequences distinct from a tax failure: it affects the company’s public standing and, if ignored for long enough, can lead to the company being struck off the register.

In Odoo

Odoo has no direct role in Companies House filings, since these are company-secretarial submissions rather than accounting or ERP output, though the statutory accounts prepared using Odoo’s ledger data are one of the documents that eventually gets filed there. Keeping a simple internal record of company-secretarial obligations alongside the accounting calendar helps avoid these filings being remembered only when HMRC-related work already has everyone’s attention.

Common mistakes

• Assuming that filing with HMRC also satisfies Companies House obligations, or the reverse.
• Forgetting to notify Companies House promptly of a change in directors or registered office.
• Letting company-secretarial filings lapse because attention is focused on tax obligations instead.