Update an entity's details

Entity Details holds the facts about the entity itself: its identifiers, names and website, tax and structure, and formation and governance. Keep it current as things change and as you find gaps, because deadlines, filings and reports all read from it.

Edit the details

1. Open the entity and choose Entity Details in its sidebar. Click Edit above the cards.

   

2. Change the fields you need. Every card on the page becomes editable at once: Identifiers, Names & website, Tax & structure and Formation & governance.

   

3. Click Save changes, or Cancel to leave everything as it was.

The registration number shown under Identifiers is the home registration's. If the entity has no home registration yet, the page tells you to add one under Registrations instead.

When the entity is another company's officer

If the entity is itself a director, secretary or LLP member of another company, changing its name, registered office or registration asks When did this change? before you can save. Choose The details changed and give the date, and a filing task is raised in each company where it holds office. Choose This corrects a mistake when the record was wrong and nothing changed in fact.

Record facts that change over time

Some fields hold a fact with a date: whether the company runs a payroll, its turnover, its average number of employees. Which ones appear depends on the entity's country, and each is labelled in that country's terms, so a Spanish company's turnover reads Turnover (importe neto de la cifra de negocios). Most sit in the Tax & structure card.

1. Click Edit and find the field.

2. Enter the value, then the date beside it. A yes-or-no fact asks Since: the day it became true, such as the first payday for a payroll. A yearly figure asks Financial year starting: the first day of the year it belongs to. A value is saved only once it has its date.

   

3. Click Save changes.

Enter each new year's figure with its own Financial year starting date rather than typing over last year's, so every year is kept. Deadlines that run from a stated date, such as PAYE from the first payday, are worked out from these fields; see Keep track of tax and pension deadlines.

When a change would cancel tasks

Some groups of entities follow the facts on the record, such as the VAT-registered companies or the employers. When an edit would take the entity out of such a group, the duties the group carries stop, and their open tasks would go with them. So the save stops and asks first. The same question appears when you cancel a registration or end an address.

1. Read the list. It names each duty, every open task under it with its due date, and what will happen to the task: removed from the calendar, cancelled with the work on it kept, or left open and flagged because it was already filed.

   

2. If anything on the list still needs doing, click Keep the tasks. Nothing is saved, and you can finish the work first.

3. When the change is right and the tasks are no longer owed, click Confirm and cancel tasks.

A change that arrives without anyone editing, such as a sync or a document IQ applied on its own, has nobody to ask at the time. Instead the entity's Overview and Entity Details pages say that a background update would take it out of the group, list the tasks, and offer Confirm removal. The entity stays in the group until someone confirms.

Record a former or trading name

1. In the Name history card, click Add name.

   

2. Enter the Name, choose its Type, and add the dates it was used, Effective from and Until. Then click Add.

   

The types of name on offer depend on the entity's jurisdiction.

Tips from practice

• Record former names with their dates. Search finds a company by its former names, which helps when an old document uses the name it had then.
• The Data completeness figure on the page's header card counts what is still missing. Click it to see the list; see Fill the gaps in an entity's record.
• To change the status, read Change an entity's status first: it asks for one more date.