File Accounts At Companies House

To file accounts, open the Reports tab, highlight the required report in the Reports List, then click Preview.

When you are ready to file, click the File at Companies House button in the preview’s toolbar. You will be asked to confirm that you wish to ‘File accounts with Companies House’. Click Yes to continue.

Next you will need to be authenticated by Onvio. If it is the first time you are filing accounts this way, then you will be asked to enter the email address and password that you normally use when you login to Onvio using your web browser.

On subsequent occasions, you will normally only be required to enter your Onvio password. Your email address will not be required.

Once you have been authenticated, your session will remain open for at least 30 minutes, during this time you will not need to be authenticated again.

Each time you file or request a status update from Companies House for a previous filing, the session is reset to 30 minutes remaining. After 30 minutes of inactivity, the session will terminate. You will then need to sign in again with your password next time you need to file accounts or check status.

If you have multi-factor authentication enabled in Onvio, then this will apply when logging in to file accounts in the same way it does when logging in to Onvio from your web browser.

As soon as authentication is complete and if there are no validation issues (see below), then the accounts will be transmitted to Companies House and you will receive an immediate response. The response should be to acknowledge receipt. It is possible that the accounts will be rejected immediately if there is something fundamentally wrong with the submission, such as an incorrect Company Authentication Code.

Companies House do not give their final acceptance of a set of accounts immediately. There is always a small delay from a few minutes to several hours between a document being received electronically by Companies House and their acceptance (or rejection) of that document.

To obtain a status update from Companies House for a set of accounts that you have recently filed, but for which have not yet received a final ‘Accepted’ or ‘Rejected’ response, click again on the same button that you clicked to file the accounts. You will then see a message giving you the current status.

Validation issues

In the normal course of events, e-filing your clients’ accounts will be straight forward, however there are several issues that can prevent successful filing to Companies House. The following are some of the potential issues:

• Company/LLP is not linked to Onvio:The company/LLP has not been sent to Onvio from Digita Practice Management (error E000). Solution: Send the company/LLP to Onvio from Digita Practice Management.
• Company/LLP not found in Onvio: The company/LLP has been sent to Onvio but cannot be found (error E020). Solution: Re-send the company/LLP to Onvio from Digita Practice Management.
• Viewing in Design Mode: You are attempting to file accounts while in the Reports tab’s Design mode. Solution: To file, switch to Preview mode.
• Not for presentation to Companies House: The accounts are UK FRS102 or UK IFRS but are flagged as being financial statements for presentation to HMRC or to the Members, not for Companies House. Solution: Go to the General section of the Summary tab and select for presentation to Companies House.
• No Company Authentication Code: The company/LLP’s ‘company authentication code’ has not been recorded in Onvio (error EF1010). Solution: Open the client through Onvio | Set Up | Client, open the Companies House tab and then enter and save its company authentication code.
• Registered number does not match: The registered number as recorded in Digita Accounts Production Advanced and Onvio is not identical (error AA1020). Solution: Correct the registered number so that it is identical in both locations. The length should be eight characters.
• Company/LLP name does not match: The entity’s name as recorded in Digita Accounts Production Advanced and Onvio is not identical (error AA1010). Solution: Correct the name so that it is identical in both locations.

At the point you submit a set of accounts, it is possible that Companies House will return an error. If this happens, click Details >> to expand the filing dialog. This may show some information from Companies House to indicate the cause of the error.