It’s not what you know, it’s who you know

A new client called me last week to discuss some changes at their company. “We’ve got a new director”, he said. “Ah yes, I saw that Ms. W had been appointed,” I replied. He was surprised that I knew already. Much as I like to pride myself on my accounting abilities, I can’t claim to be a psychic. The reason I knew was that we follow all of our active clients (and some of the former ones too).

What does follow mean?

Companies House has a free service that is open to everyone. You create an account and then choose companies that you’d like to follow. You will then receive an email notification of all company transactions. Such as the appointment of a director, a change to the registered office or a charge being placed over the company’s assets. These are just a few of the things that a criminal might do to your legitimate company as part of a fraud or theft. We encourage all of our clients to follow their own company – here is how you can do that too: how to follow your company

What else can you do?

There are 2 other simple steps you can take. Firstly, make sure that you have joined the PROOF scheme. This ensures that changes to your data at Companies House can only be made electronically and this requires your authentication code – much harder to do that a fake signature on a paper form.

You should also check your own address in the Companies House database from time to time to see if anyone is using it. The “advanced search” functionality (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/advanced-search) lets you look for your address as a registered office. It won’t show you anyone using your address as their service address but it’s definitely worth doing.

Would you like to speak to an accountant who looks at the bigger picture? At Composure, we’re great with numbers but we do so much more for our clients. Please book in a call with one of the team if you think we can help you: https://calendly.com/jo-mcmanus/website-enquiry