Add an existing company to Kudocs (1) – Onboarding summary
How do I add a company to Kudocs? Very easily.
Kudocs has a live connection to Companies House, so all you need to do is enter your company name or number, enter your Authentication Code and then Kudocs will build your company profile for you, using the information that is publicly and privately stored at Companies House (don’t worry, the private information will remain private in your Kudocs account).
You just need to review the information we’ve pulled from Companies House, confirm it is correct (or update it if not) and that’s it. You’re all set up on Kudocs.
For a more detailed explanation of how/ what data we get from Companies House, see here.
There are 2 different ways to onboard a company – Quick and Full. What is the difference and which option should I choose? We have a dedicated FAQ to explain this – see here.
What is an Authentication Code? A password that allows the company to access its private information at Companies House. It is what the company needs to file documents through webfiling and it is what Kudocs uses to connect the companies account directly to Companies House so you dont have to worry about web-filing ever again! It will be securely stored in Kudocs for your future reference (rather than on a piece of paper that everyone looses and it then takes weeks to get a new one…).
I’ve lost my Authentication Code – how can I get a new one? This is not a problem – you can order a new one from Companies House – they will send it by post to the company’s registered address.
What types of company does Kudocs support? Kudocs supports:
- companies limited by shares or limited by guarantee (e.g. “Ltd”)
- public limited companies (both traded and untraded – e.g. “PLC”)
- Limited Liability Partnerships (“LLP”).
When I start onboarding my company, the information I see does not match my own records – why? Kudocs pulls information about a company that is currently stored at Companies House. That information might not be correct for 2 reasons:
- because previous filings by the company are wrong (incorrect names, numbers, etc); OR
- the information is not wrong, but not up to date. This is because a company does not have to file information about all changes immediately – e.g. it does not need to file details of shareholders (via a confirmation statement) after every share transaction – it only needs to file details of share capital changes (SH01, SH02, SH03 etc). Therefore Companies House will know about the latest share capital, but not the latest information about which shareholders own what. The information at Companies House is correct based on the last – correct – filings but not correct compared to the company registers (which should show all the details of the shareholders and share capital).
Don’t worry about this – there are various ways that you can fix this during or after onboarding.
What information does Kudocs get from Companies House when onboarding to build the initial account in Kudocs? The way you add an existing company to Kudocs is by adding company name/ number and authentication code. This allows Kudocs to pull all the data it can from Companies House, to created the account (and therefore the registers in Kudocs). The information provided by Companies House is comprehensive but patchy. By this we mean that Kudocs is provided with:
- Current and historic officer information (including all addresses)
- Current and historic PSC/RLEs
- Current and historic LLP members
- Current and historic charge information
The historic information can vary, but should go back to pre-2000, but it depends on the quality of information stored by Companies House.
- Current share capital (nominal value and particulars) is provided as per the most recent share capital filings (ie SH01, SH02).
- Current shareholders and shareholdings as per the last confirmation statement.
Therefore, it is possible to end up with the shareholders & shareholdings as per the last confirmation statement, but the nominal value as per a more recent share capital filing. You can usually resolve this as part of onboarding (see the other FAQs on this subject).
Companies House does not provide historic share capital or shareholder information. While some of that information is available in the filing history on their website, this is not information that is stored in their database (they replace it each time there is a new filing), so there is now way for us to access the data electronically. We have looked into to trying to extract data from the previous filings, but this does not help as Kudocs is a register and transaction based system. So it is not just a case of knowing that a share had ‘x’ shares at a given date, what the system needs is to know why & how that number changed over time. The previous filings at Companies House do not provide this:
- share capital filings just show high level information – they do not show (eg) to whom shares were issued or (e.g.) whose shares were issued fully or partly paid, etc.
- confirmation statements just show shareholdings as at a given time – they do not show all the changes between filings, which a set of registers (which is what Kudocs is) needs.
Therefore, you need to add historic shareholder information separately – see the question below.
What about the company records/ registers/ books that I have already? How do I add them to Kudocs? There are a number of ways to do this and we’d be happy to discuss this with you in detail. But in summary you can
(i) upload the previous records as documents into you Document store – easily accessible for whenever you need to look at them (easiest & quickest);
(ii) create detailed histories for the company and stakeholders by recording specific ‘historic; events; or
(iii) we can help with bulk data imports if you have the information in a data form.
For more information see here: https://www.kudocs.co.uk/faqs/importing-data-from-other-systems-into-kudocs/
I started onboarding a while ago, and have only now come back to it. Since I started there have been changes to the company information at Companies House. How do I refresh the data in Kudocs? Very easily. On step 1 of Onboarding there is an option to refresh the data. Just press on the {Get latest information from Companies House} button.
