Adding People
Overview
The system maintains a database of people who are directors, secretaries, or shareholders. Any person from the database can be selected to be an officer or member of any company.
You can add people to the system via the Person menu. You can also add people “on the fly” when you are entering the details of an officer or member.
Adding a person via the menu
- Select Person > Add a person from the menu and the following appears:
Providing you are sure that the person is not already in the database, you can check using the drop-down list.
2. Click Add
Note: if you have a long list of people, drop down the list and then press a letter on the keyboard and the list will jump to the first person in the list whose name starts with the letter.
3. Enter the details requested and click Save
A number of fields are marked with a red asterisk and this indicates that these fields are required by Companies House. It is possible to leave some of these fields blank, but if required fields are left blank and you use the record for e-filing at a later date you will be prompted that they need to be completed before filing the document.
If you have left any of these fields blank you will see a message similar to the following:
You can click Fix it now to return to the person page and enter the data or click Fix it later to save the record without completing the data at this time.
Other ways of accessing the add person routine
You can also add a person from the list of people recorded on the system, shown by the menu option Person > Show all People.
If you have a lot of records on the system this is a better way of adding people as it will be easier to check if the person is already in the database using the Search option.
Wherever you are given the option to select a person from a drop-down list, such as when adding a link for a director or shareholder, the second entry in the list allows you to create a new person record to use:
Complete the process to create the link and a new record will be added in the person database with the name (NEW ENTRY – PLEASE USE ME OR DELETE ME). For example, if you are adding a new director you will see:
Click on the hyperlink to the new entry to display the person details page to enter their information.
Authentication for Directors when forming a Company
When forming a new company, Companies House uses an electronic identification system that comprises of three questions and known answers. This information is entered as part of the person’s – new directors required details and the record is stored on the system, all though it will not be needed beyond that one time.
The questions are as follows:
Note; Because Annual Returns have been replaced by Confirmation Statements this could cause duplicate people records (in some scenarios). For information on how to resolve this click here