Changing Your Company Year End
There are several reasons why you might consider changing your company year-end – which will either shorten or lengthen the accounting period.
A company can shorten its accounting period as many times as it likes – but it can only lengthen it once every five years (or to be more exact, notice can’t be given to extend an accounting period if it is within 5 years of an accounting period which has been extended). So if you’re going to lengthen your accounting period, make sure there’s a valid reason to do so!
Normal company year-end
A company’s normal year-end is the last day of the month 12 months after the company was incorporated – so if a company is incorporated any time during March 2020 then its year-end will be 31st March 2021. To understand more about what an incorporated entity is, check out our article What is a Limited Company?
The company’s first set of accounts will be due for filing at Companies House 21 months after the date of incorporation. So in our example above, if the company is incorporated on 21st March 2020 then its 31st March 2021 accounts will be due for filing by 21st December 2021 – ie 21 months after the incorporation date of 21st March 2020.
Going forward the accounts will be due for filing at Companies House 9 months after the year-end – adjusted for the month’s end. So for example, if the company’s year was 28th February 2020 then the accounts will be due for filing by 30th November 2020.
However, if the company’s year end was 26th February 2020 then the accounts will be due for filing by 26th November 2020.
A company can also choose to file accounts up to a date that is within 7 days of its registered accounting date (before or after). This can be useful for companies that do their bookkeeping weekly e.g. restaurants or bars – although this is becoming less common as modern bookkeeping systems mean that businesses are less likely to do their bookkeeping weekly (take a look at Xero and FreeAgent).
If a company chooses to file accounts up to a date within 7 days of its registered accounting date, the directors do not need to notify Companies House of this change.
How to change a company year end?
When changing the company year-end, the first step is to complete the form AA01 (which you can see here) and submit this to Companies House.
However, it’s important to note that the accounting date cannot be changed if the accounts are overdue so form AA01 must be received at Companies House within the allowable period for submitting your company’s accounts.
And if you’d like to know how we can help you with all of this, or with anything else, feel free to give us a call at 0330 113 8442 or email us at info@a-wise.co.uk.
