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File dormant company accounts with Companies House, for £15.
Your company did nothing this year — no sales, no purchases, nothing through the bank. Companies House still wants accounts. Answer a handful of plain-English questions, read exactly what we've prepared, and we file it for you through official Companies House software.
£15 per filing. No subscription, no account fee. You pay at the point you file, not before.
Is my company actually dormant?
Companies House uses "dormant" in a narrower sense than most people expect. It isn't about whether the company felt busy — it's about whether anything went through the books.
A company is dormant for a financial year if it had no significant accounting transactions during that year. A significant accounting transaction is anything that would normally have to be entered in the company's accounting records: an invoice raised, a supplier paid, a salary run, interest received, money moved for the business.
A small number of things are specifically allowed and do not break dormancy — most usefully, money paid by subscribers for their shares, and certain fees paid to Companies House itself, such as filing a confirmation statement or changing the company's name.
You're almost certainly dormant if
- You registered the company to hold a name or protect a brand, and haven't started trading yet.
- You've paused a business — the company still exists, but nothing has moved for a full year.
- The company holds an idea, a domain, or a future plan, and there is no bank activity against it.
- You set the company up for a contract that never happened.
You're probably not dormant if
- The company invoiced anyone at all, even once, even for a small amount.
- You paid a business expense from the company account — software, an accountant, insurance.
- The company paid you or anyone else a salary or dividend.
- A business bank account earned interest.
If any of those apply, your company traded, and it needs micro-entity accounts rather than dormant ones. Our wizard asks you the same question in plain English and picks the right type for you — you don't have to decide before you start.
What actually gets filed
Dormant company accounts are the simplest legal document in the whole Companies House system. For a dormant company limited by shares, they are essentially a balance sheet showing the called-up share capital and the same figure as net assets, plus the statutory statements that go with it — and nothing else. There is no profit and loss account to file, because there was no profit or loss.
On paper, Companies House's version of this is form AA02. We don't send paper. We generate the same accounts as tagged electronic accounts (iXBRL, against the FRC's FRS 105 taxonomy — the standard the register expects) and transmit them through Companies House's official software filing channel, which is the same channel accountants' software uses.
You see the finished accounts in full before anything is submitted. Nothing goes to the register until you have read them and pressed approve.
When are dormant accounts due?
For a private limited company, accounts are normally due 9 months after the end of your accounting reference period — the company's financial year end, which you can look up on your company's page on the public register.
A brand new company gets longer for its first set: 21 months from the date of incorporation, or 3 months from the accounting reference date if that falls later. After that first filing, the ordinary 9-month rule applies every year.
The penalty for filing late is automatic. Companies House does not send a warning first, and "the company was dormant" is not a defence — the published scale for a private company is:
| How late the accounts are | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Up to 1 month | £150 |
| 1 to 3 months | £375 |
| 3 to 6 months | £750 |
| More than 6 months | £1,500 |
File late two years running and the penalty doubles. Keep missing it entirely and Companies House can begin striking the company off the register — which is how people lose a company name they had been carefully holding on to.
One thing worth knowing now: from April 2028, accounts must be filed through commercial software. Companies House is closing both paper filing and its own free WebFiling service, and that applies to dormant companies too. Filing this way now is the direction the whole register is moving in.
What you'll need before you start
- Your company number. Eight characters, on your certificate of incorporation and on the public register. We pull your company's details from the register so you're not retyping them.
- Your Companies House authentication code. The six-character code that authorises a filing. If you've lost it, Companies House will post a replacement to the registered office — worth requesting before your deadline, not after.
- Your financial year end. We read this from the register, and show it back to you so you can confirm we're filing for the right period.
That's the whole list. No figures to gather, no spreadsheet, no bank statements — a dormant year has nothing to add up.
How it works
You prepare and approve your own accounts. We turn your answers into the format Companies House requires and transmit them for you.
Enter your company number. We pull your company's public details from the register so you're not retyping them.
Confirm the company was dormant. One plain-English question — "did the company trade this year?" — and the period we're filing for.
Review exactly what will be filed. We show you the finished accounts in full. Nothing is submitted until you've read them and approved.
Pay £15 and we file it. Your approved accounts go to Companies House through their official software channel. Confirmation lands in your inbox.
Next year takes two minutes. We keep your details and remind you before the deadline, so it never sneaks up on you.
Your accounts, prepared by you, filed through our software. TidyFilings is not an accountant, tax adviser, or Authorised Corporate Service Provider — we don't prepare your figures for you or give accounting advice. You confirm the accounts are right; we transmit what you approve.
Common questions
The things people actually ask before filing dormant accounts for the first time.
Do I really have to file if the company did nothing at all?
Yes. The obligation to file accounts comes from being on the register, not from trading. A company that has never issued an invoice, never opened a bank account and never had a customer still owes Companies House a set of accounts every year, and the late-filing penalty applies just the same.
Is this the same as the AA02 form?
It covers the same filing. AA02 is Companies House's paper form for dormant company accounts. We prepare the equivalent accounts electronically and file them through the official software channel, which is faster and gives you a confirmation you can keep.
Do I still need to tell HMRC anything?
Possibly — and that's a separate question from this one. Companies House and HMRC are different organisations with different deadlines. Filing your dormant accounts with Companies House does not by itself deal with Corporation Tax. If you're unsure what HMRC expects from your company, check with them or with a qualified adviser; we file with Companies House only.
What if I've already missed the deadline?
File as soon as you can. The penalty is banded by how late the accounts are, so the difference between filing now and filing in a month can be hundreds of pounds. A late filing is still accepted — the penalty is separate from whether the accounts go on the register.
I don't have my authentication code.
You'll need it before any filing can go through, ours or anyone else's. Request a replacement from Companies House; it gets posted to the company's registered office address, so allow time for that before your deadline.
What does an accountant charge for this?
Typically £150–500 a year to prepare and file accounts that say the company did nothing. That gap is the entire reason this exists. If your company's affairs are more complicated than a dormant year, an accountant is genuinely worth the money — this is for the case where there is nothing to advise on.
Do you store my authentication code?
No. The code is used to transmit the filing you approve and is never written to our logs or kept afterwards. Our privacy policy sets out exactly how it's handled, along with everything else we do and don't keep.
What happens if Companies House rejects the filing?
Only Companies House decides whether to accept a filing, and a rejection can happen for reasons outside our control — a wrong authentication code, a period that isn't open, a company that isn't eligible for the accounts type chosen. Where a filing fails for a reason on our side, our refund policy applies.
Your dormant accounts, filed today.
Fifteen pounds, a few minutes, and one fewer deadline hanging over you.
File your dormant accounts