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As an accountant, offering company secretarial services to your clients makes perfect sense. You already handle complex regulations and compliance on their behalf – so extending that expertise into company secretarial work is a natural progression.

You’re well-placed to ensure clients stay compliant with Companies House and other statutory requirements, while saving them time on administrative tasks that can easily become a source of stress.

At the same time, building a company secretarial practice is a smart way to grow your firm, strengthen client relationships, and create a dependable recurring revenue stream.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up and scaling your company secretarial services.

1. Work out how you’ll deliver it

Company secretarial work is about more than simply submitting confirmation statements. It’s a crucial part of your clients’ corporate governance, statutory compliance, and overall business integrity.

From filing director changes and maintaining shareholder registers to handling annual returns and statutory record-keeping, these tasks ensure a company meets its legal obligations under the Companies Act.

Start by considering your capacity and structure:

• People – do you already have team members who can take this on, or could you train a junior staff member to manage day-to-day filings?
• Processes – how will company secretarial work fit into your existing client workflows?
• Technology – which systems or software can automate the repetitive elements and reduce admin time?

For many firms, it makes sense to start small – perhaps by offering company formations and annual statement filings – before expanding into more advanced services like share restructuring, director changes, and registered office management.

The goal is to plan your service delivery first, so you have the infrastructure to support growth as demand increases.

2. Invest in the right Company Secretarial software

Scalability is key to profitability – and that’s where cloud-based company secretarial software makes all the difference.

Using digital tools allows you to manage multiple clients efficiently while ensuring every submission to Companies House is timely, accurate, and compliant.

Look for software that integrates directly with Companies House to automatically update records and sync key data. That way, you can cut down on duplication, reduce risk, and maintain a single, up-to-date source of truth for each client.

Key features to look for include:

• Integration with Companies House – submit and synchronise company information automatically.
• Confirmation statement filing (CS01) – generate and file with ease, using automated reminders to prevent late submissions.
• PSC management – update people with significant control (PSCs) without manual data entry.
• Dormant accounts production and filing – handle inactive entities efficiently.
• Automated reminders and workflows – create checklists, trigger alerts, and track deadlines.
• Audit trails and digital document storage – maintain transparent records for clients and regulators.

A well-chosen system not only helps you stay compliant but also supports hybrid working – enabling your team to manage company secretarial tasks securely from anywhere.

Cloud tools like Capium’s company secretarial software are built specifically for accountants, helping firms handle company formations, filings, and confirmations directly within the same platform used for accounts and tax.

This level of integration saves time, reduces re-keying, and makes your practice more efficient.

3. Build repeatable processes

Once you have the right software in place, focus on process consistency. Your company secretarial service should be as structured and predictable as your year-end workflow.

Consider developing:

• Client onboarding templates for new incorporations and statutory records.
• Annual compliance calendars that align with Companies House deadlines.
• Internal checklists for each stage of the process – from verifying PSC details to sending clients confirmation reminders.

The more consistent your processes, the easier it becomes to delegate, train team members, and deliver the same level of service across your portfolio.

Automation can also play a big role here – for example, by triggering reminders when confirmation statements are due or automatically logging Companies House acknowledgements in your client files.

4. Decide on your pricing model

Pricing company secretarial services can feel tricky at first, but the principle is the same as any other professional service: align your price with the time, expertise, and value you deliver.

Consider these factors when setting fees:

• Time – estimate how long it takes to manage each client’s filings and compliance checks.
• Risk – remember that company secretarial work carries legal and reputational responsibility.
• Expertise – clients are paying for your knowledge of corporate law and your ability to keep them compliant.
• Value – for clients, the real benefit lies in peace of mind and freeing up their time to focus on their business.

There are two common pricing approaches:

• Ad-hoc billing – charge a fixed fee for specific tasks, such as company formation, director updates, or Companies House submissions.
• Subscription or retainer model – offer an annual package that covers everything from routine filings to ongoing support.

Bundling your company secretarial services alongside existing packages (like accounts production or payroll) can help build long-term client loyalty and predictable revenue.

5. Communicate clearly with clients

Even the best service needs clear communication to succeed.

Start by speaking to your existing client base – they already trust you with sensitive business information, and many will welcome the opportunity to consolidate their compliance work with one provider.

• Send a dedicated email explaining your new company secretarial service.
• Highlight key benefits such as Companies House integration, accurate filings, and reduced admin time.
• Offer to include the service in existing monthly packages if it adds convenience and value.

Next, focus on marketing to new and prospective clients.

• Update your website with a dedicated page for company secretarial services for accountants.
• Include clear examples of how you can help – e.g. company formations, PSC management, and digital confirmation statement filing.
• Share helpful content on social media about Companies House deadlines or the risks of non-compliance.
• Use educational content (like blog posts, guides, or short videos) to position yourself as an expert in governance and compliance.

By focusing your communication on peace of mind and simplicity, rather than the technical details, you’ll make your service appealing to a wider audience.

6. Strengthen your relationship with Companies House

Building your company secretarial practice also means developing a deeper understanding of how Companies House operates – and how to use its digital services to your advantage.

The government has been steadily modernising Companies House systems, moving toward greater transparency and more stringent reporting requirements. Accountants who keep pace with these updates will be able to offer even greater value to clients.

Practical ways to strengthen your connection with Companies House include:

• Regularly checking updates and guidance on the Companies House website.
• Ensuring your software is API-integrated so it syncs seamlessly with Companies House data.
• Keeping accurate digital records of all filings, acknowledgements, and deadlines.
• Using client data dashboards to track compliance status across your portfolio.

By staying proactive and digitally connected, you’ll help your clients avoid penalties and build trust through reliable, transparent reporting.

7. Set goals and measure success

Finally, treat your new company secretarial service like any other business development initiative.

Set clear goals and KPIs – such as:

• Number of clients signed up in the first quarter.
• Average time saved per filing.
• Percentage of filings submitted on or before deadline.
• Profit margin per client for the service.

Review these metrics regularly, and don’t hesitate to refine your process or pricing as your client base grows.

The firms that succeed with company secretarial services are the ones that treat them as a strategic offering, not just an admin add-on.

Build a future-ready Company Secretarial practice

By taking a structured approach – combining the right people, processes, and software – you can build a company secretarial practice that adds value for your clients and growth potential for your firm.

Cloud-based solutions like Capium’s company secretarial software make it easier than ever to manage filings, form new companies, and stay compliant with Companies House.

It’s an opportunity to expand your services, enhance client trust, and future-proof your practice for the digital era.

If you’d like to see how Capium can help, get in touch for a demo.

The post How to build your company secretarial practice appeared first on capium.

In October 2023, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act became a legal cornerstone, ushering in a new era of regulatory changes in the United Kingdom. As Companies House gears up for these changes and measures, they would also like to focus on introducing the first wave of reforms on the 4th of March 2024. 

While this date hinges on parliamentary timetables, it will not be earlier than the specified date.

The forthcoming changes encompass a spectrum of enhancements, including:

• Empowering authorities with greater capabilities to query information and request supporting evidence.
• Rigorous checks on company names to ensure transparency and accuracy.
• New regulations for registered office addresses.
• All companies are to provide a registered email address.
• Requiring companies to confirm their lawful purpose upon incorporation and affirm that their intended future activities align with legality in their confirmation statements.
• Enhancing the ability to annotate the register to address confusing or misleading information.
• Initiating a data-driven cleanup of the register, utilising data matching to identify and rectify inaccurate information.
• Facilitating data sharing with other government departments and law enforcement agencies.

For a comprehensive overview of the changes introduced by the act, please visit the Companies House dedicated website.

What early changes mean for you

Understanding that companies, intermediaries, and stakeholders seek preparedness, we have distilled three pivotal changes.

New rules for registered office addresses

Commencing 4th March 2024, companies must maintain an ‘appropriate address’ as their registered office at all times. An appropriate address is one where documents sent to the registered office are expected to reach a person acting on behalf of the company, and these documents can be acknowledged upon delivery. The use of PO Boxes as registered office addresses will be prohibited from this date.

Registered email address requirement

Effective 4 March 2024, all companies must provide a registered email address to Companies House. This email address will remain private and will be used for official communication regarding the company. New companies must furnish a registered email address upon incorporation, while existing companies must provide one in their next confirmation statement filed from 5th March 2024.

Lawful purpose statements

From 4th March 2024, subscribers (shareholders) during incorporation must confirm that they are forming the company for a lawful purpose. Additionally, companies must confirm the lawfulness of their intended future activities in the confirmation statement. Failure to confirm these statements will result in the rejection of documents.

These measures align with the new registrars’ objectives, ensuring a framework that promotes lawful operations for all registered companies. All decisions will be grounded in these objectives, contributing to a more transparent and accountable corporate landscape.

Need to understand this more? Join our webinar! 

Capium is offering a Free webinar this Tuesday the 13th of February at 1 pm to help you understand these changes in more detail.

Click here to register and book your spot today.

If you don’t have time to attend but would like to understand it more – register for the webinar anyway so that you can receive the recording after the session.

The post Are you ready for March’s company law changes? appeared first on capium.

Setting up your own accounting business can be hard work, but that’s the price for working for yourself! Being your own boss is not easy.

To guarantee success you need a steady stream of customers. Still, with continued economic uncertainty, it can be difficult to get clients to sign up long-term- unless you show value!

If you’re smart, resilient, and focused, this time of year is the best time to set up a digital shopfront and open a practice.

Why? The UK tax regime ensures that November through February is when people are most likely to be online searching for a new accountant.

Right now, it’s likely to be because they need an accountant urgently having failed to prepare for the self-assessment deadline on 31 January 2022.

After the self-assessment deadline, it’s more likely to be because they’ve had a bad experience with their accountant and want to make sure they’ve got someone better lined up for next year. This puts you in a better position, as you want as much time with your clients as possible to understand their needs and requirements better.

Either way, there’s absolutely no reason the accountant they find shouldn’t be you and your new side hustle.

Here are the four Cs for launching a new business venture:

Cloud

We can understand why some established Practices might struggle to cut the cord and ditch the desktop but new firms have no excuse.

Use the cloud for accounting, client management and office software and your solopreneur or partnership journey will be smoother.

This not only makes you compliant in terms of accounting and future initiatives in line with HMRC but access to data. 

You can access data and client records wherever you are, even if that’s in the office car park or on holiday! 

Control the cost – Rules to costings 

Bottom line software shouldn’t eat into your profit.

Be smart with your software purchases as it can help you pass savings onto your clients and thus win them over from the competition. In today’s climate, the total software tech stack should cost you no more than an average of 10%-15% of your total revenue.

Compliance

When trying to build a reputation from scratch, you need to get the basics right from day one. Or as we say at Capium, you’ve got to “do the needful”, without compromise.

Get yourself affiliated with a trustworthy industry body – there are quite a few to choose from! Get insurance and make sure you’re compliant with things like anti-money laundering legislation.

Just because it’s a sideline project,  you can’t afford to mess it up or be half-hearted about anything: clients need to feel you’re serious. Who knows! This might end up being your full-time gig one day.

Connections

Focus on your client – who are you targeting and why is your Practice different to, and better than, the competition? Is there a need for your services in your group of connections already? Why not put some feelers out there? 

Focus on how your services are unique and why they should go with you instead of another Accountant or bookkeeper. And no – a lower price point is not always the answer! 

Contact Us

Capium provides an ecosystem of cloud-based accounting services – which are MTD-compliant! With clients seeing up to 70% return on investment in our software. This could be you – book a demo now to start your journey. 

The post Time to start your side hustle? We have the perfect solution for you. appeared first on capium.

Starting a company secretarial service is a good move for many accounting firms – your clients need support to stay within company regulations, and they need to save time on complicated admin tasks.

As an expert in handling tricky regulations on behalf of clients, you’re in the ideal position to provide this service. 

But setting fees for it can be a tricky balance. If you set them too high you might struggle to win enough business, but too low and you’ll be putting a lot of resources towards new work for your firm without seeing much return.

Pricing your company secretarial service

To work out what you should be charging for your service, you’ll need to take into account a number of factors, including your:

Time: As with any professional work, you need to charge enough to make the service worth your time. Estimate how long all of the tasks involved in a company secretarial service will take you and your team, considering the cost across different levels of seniority. If you can find opportunities to streamline and automate these administrative tasks, you can make your service more cost-effective.

Risk: Company secretarial duties are all about meeting legal requirements. This is a high degree of responsibility for you as the provider of these services – if things go wrong, there’s the potential for serious professional damage. For this reason, it’s vital that you pin down the details of the service you’re providing with your client, in writing, and understand exactly what your responsibilities and liabilities are. But considering the risk involved, you should factor this into the value of your service.

Expertise: You’re offering this service because you and your team can do it faster, more accurately and more efficiently than your client can. That’s because of the knowledge you’ve built up over the years, through professional training and experience. Take into account the time spent acquiring your skills and knowledge when you set the price for your service.

Value: Ultimately, the value of a service is what your clients are willing to pay for it. Think about it from their perspective – what does your company secretarial service provide, and how much does it mean to them? The chances are, people are willing to pay more for a service that’s smooth, stress-free, and genuinely helpful to them. The better you can make the client experience overall, the more your clients will value it. 

Packaging up your company secretarial service

The way you package and sell your service is another thing to consider. 

Will you perform isolated tasks (like registering a new company, filing confirmation statements, updating company changes with Companies House) on an ad-hoc basis, charging a small amount each time? Or will you carry out the full service for a recurring fee? 

Fees for the former option often range between £10-£30 per form filing, while the latter might be an annual fee anywhere between £100-£400, depending on the level of service included.

For many accounting firms, a subscription-style pricing model is an effective and sustainable source of income, allowing you to maintain and build on your relationships with clients. 

But your business model may vary, and you might find offering lots of company registrations with a speedy and efficient process works for you. You could also think about introducing tiers of service for different types or sizes of client, as well as offering add-ons to a base package.

Capium’s all-in-one accounting software makes company secretarial services easy. Talk to us to find out more.

The post How much should company secretarial cost? appeared first on capium.

This can make your life more difficult with the extra VAT filing and, more worryingly, will push up the price clients pay you to support their company.

Therefore, you need to know how to explain to your clients the value of company secretarial services and how you’ll save them money in the long run.

If you don’t offer company secretarial services, you should consider doing so. The advantages of such a service for accounting firms are immense.

But first, for the benefit of those new to this unique service, what actually is company secretarial?

What are company secretarial services?

Company secretarial services are not the traditional work of a secretary, as the name suggests. Instead it refers to the administrative function within a company that ensures good corporate governance and compliance.

Company secretarial is essential if companies want to adhere to the legally binding Companies Act 2006. A company secretary will maintain statutory records, for instance, including those detailing meetings between shareholders and engagements with Government authorities. 

They also report to Companies House with notices on changes to a company’s structure or management.

What’s more, they run the main communication channels in the company. So they’ll arrange meetings of the shareholders and directors, and keep the minutes for those meetings. 

Why accounting firms should offer company secretarial services

The uninitiated might think company secretarial is just a series of administrative tasks their client can get on with themselves. 

A lot of companies think just like that and assume they’ll be fine. More often than not, though, they quickly run into trouble. 

That’s why it’s so important for businesses to invest in company secretarial services and just one of the reasons why accounting firms should offer it.

It’s a service that is quickly becoming more and more valuable for many of your clients, who’ll be willing to part with their cash, plus VAT, if you successfully persuade them of the benefits.

Try to highlight all the time they’ll save and stress they’ll avoid if they outsource their duties over to you. 

There really is no room for mistakes in the world of corporate law and regulation, so also explain how, with an experienced secretary who has the right tools and knowledge, they’ll never have to worry about fines or other punishments for inadvertently breaking the requirements of the Companies Act.

Software for company secretarial services

A key advantage of a dedicated company secretarial service is that an accountancy firm is more likely to have the tools necessary to turn something that is stressful for their clients to a streamlined process.

One of these tools is specialist software, which you yourself need to invest in. It’ll transform your secretarial offering from something that might resemble an afterthought to a leading service that brings a significant amount of money into your firm.

But any old software won’t do. It could be outdated or hastily put together, resulting in a poor working experience for you and less than satisfactory results for your clients.

Capium Cosec, on the other hand, makes fulfilling the role of a client’s company secretary quick and complete by providing all the routine filing and change documentation in little more than a few clicks of a mouse. 

As these changes need to be logged for routine yearly filing anyway, there is hardly any overhead in the offering, and all the documents are automatically retained in our Cosec onboard cloud library.

Whether you’re starting a company secretarial service or trying to improve yours, get in touch with Capium today for a tutorial on our intuitive software.

The post Are company secretarial services VAT exempt? appeared first on capium.

Capium prides itself on being an end-to-end, pure cloud suite that works seamlessly out of the metaphorical box. One price, one software and no need for a busy accountant to go on the hunt for additional apps, APIs or integrations.

As a result, Capium has gone one step further to broaden its ecosystem by introducing its all new Company Secretarial product backed up by First Corporate Law Services. By signing up to Capium, customers can be sure of 5 things:

1. Unlike stand-alone CoSec Services or other Accounting Software providers, Capium is working hard to ensure its CoSec service will include a direct data synchronisation – which means that data updated in Companies House will automatically update Client data in Capium
2. As with every SaaS business, support in a highly regulated industry is crucial, Capium already offers 6-days a week support but as the devil is in the detail the Company is partnering with First Order to provide free legal support to all Customers
3. Cash is King as Capium continues to offer market leading prices on Cloud Practice Software, its CoSec service starts from as low as £25 per month for up to 50 Clients
4. Avoid a patchwork quilt approach to software, joining the Capium ecosystem allows Accountants to dramatically simplify their supply chain. One software, one subscription
5. Access your CoSec service from any device anywhere in the world – cut the cord of clunky desktop software designed to restrict your usage

Tushir Patel, CEO of Capium, says “This is just one more step in our journey. Cloud Practice Software shouldn’t cost the earth and should actively simplify the Accountant’s life by saving them time. That’s our ethos, if it saves time then it’s on our roadmap.”

“As with our approach to software development, collaboration is key, which is why we are delighted to be collaborating with First Corporate Law Services on the legal support of this service.”

To find out more about Capium’s Company Secretarial and Formations service, sign up for a free 7-day trial today.

The post 5 Reasons Why Capium’s New CoSec Service Is A Market Gamechanger appeared first on capium.