Best Company Secretarial Software UK: How to Choose the Right Tool

Searching for the "best" company secretarial software is a shortcut that often leads you to software built for accountancy practices. Many of the products in this space are built mainly for practices, and several say so in their own page titles — company secretarial software for accountants, priced and designed for firms running dozens or hundreds of client companies. If you're a director who looks after your own company, much of that is overbuilt for what you actually need.

So instead of ranking products, this guide gives you the criteria that matter for a director-run company — and a quick way to work out which kind of tool you need in the first place. Start from the company secretary duties you carry: the right tool is the one that covers the filings and records you're actually responsible for, and nothing you aren't.

The Three Categories of Company Secretarial Software

Software in this space falls into three distinct categories.

Category 1: Filing and deadline management Tracks what you owe Companies House and when it's due. Features: deadline tracking, reminders, a filing-status dashboard.

Category 2: Company secretarial management for your own companies Category 1 plus the company's records and documents: the register of members, share allotments and transfers, share certificates, dividend paperwork, board minutes and resolutions, and officers' identity-verification status. This is what a director of an active company needs — one that pays dividends, issues or transfers shares, or takes decisions that should be minuted.

Category 3: Practice management suites Category 2 wrapped in a multi-client practice workflow. Built for accountancy firms and company secretarial providers managing many client companies. Features: client billing, bulk filing, practice-wide compliance dashboards, staff access controls.

The common mistake runs in both directions. Directors of active companies buy a deadline-only tool and keep their registers and dividend paperwork in scattered Word files; directors of simple companies end up paying for Category 3 practice features they'll never touch. The other route is not software at all: outsourcing to a company secretarial service is worth pricing before you commit.

Which Category Do You Need?

Your situation	What you need	Why
One dormant or non-trading company	Category 1	Two deadlines a year (accounts and confirmation statement), little else changes
One active company, you pay yourself by dividend	Category 2	Every dividend needs a board decision and a voucher, and needs lawful distributable profits behind it
Shares change hands — new shareholders, transfers, a spouse brought in	Category 2	The register of members has to be updated and certificates issued each time
Two or more companies (SPVs, a holding company, separate trading entities)	Category 2, priced for multiple companies	Each company has its own deadlines, register and paperwork
You're an accountant or company secretarial provider	Category 3	Client management is the job

Evaluation Criteria for Directors Who Run Their Own Company

1. Deadline Tracking and Reminders

This is the single most important feature. Companies House's independent adjudicators report that "In 2024 to 2025, Companies House issued a total of 317,985 penalties for the late filing of accounts." Free reminder emails exist; the late-filing numbers suggest email reminders alone aren't enough. See our guide to late filing penalties for the penalty bands.

What to look for:

• Due dates taken from the Companies House register, not typed in by hand
• Reminders at several intervals (30, 14, 7 and 1 day before), not one email
• Coverage of both annual accounts and the confirmation statement — the confirmation statement has its own consequences when it's overdue
• Multi-company support if you have more than one entity

Red flag: one reminder, or annual accounts only.

2. Records and Documents

For an active company, this is where the work actually is — and where mistakes are hardest to undo.

What to look for:

• The register of members. Since 18 November 2025 it is the one statutory register a company still keeps itself. It must record shareholdings accurately and be updated whenever shares are allotted or transferred. See our register of members guide.
• Share events. Allotments and transfers recorded against the register, with numbered share certificates issued to match.
• Dividend paperwork. Dividend vouchers with the right amounts per shareholder, and a step that makes you confirm the company has the distributable profits to pay — the legal precondition for any dividend.
• Board minutes and resolutions with the right resolution type for the decision. See our board resolution guide.

Red flag: documents generated in isolation from the register, so the share numbers on a certificate or a voucher can drift from the register itself.

3. Companies House Integration

There are two different things sold as "integration", and it's worth knowing which you're getting.

• Reading from Companies House — looking your company up by number and pulling its details and due dates from the public register. Saves typing and keeps dates accurate.
• Filing to Companies House — submitting forms directly from the software. Companies House publishes a list of products that can file changes: find software to register or file changes to a company. If direct filing matters to you, check the product appears there for the forms you need.

For more on the filing side, see our guide to Companies House software for filing.

4. Identity Verification Tracking

Identity verification became mandatory from 18 November 2025, and a confirmation statement is not accepted until every director has verified. Each person gets one personal code — GOV.UK's guidance is that "The code is personal to you, not your company or a company you work for", and that you "use the same personal code to confirm you are verified for each of your appointments." Each director can run our free identity verification readiness checker for a readiness score and next steps based on their own answers.

What to look for:

• Verification status tracked per director, so an unverified officer is visible before a filing is due
• Support across multiple companies — the same person's status matters in every company where they're an officer

5. Pricing Model

Per-company pricing can punish directors with several entities — a portfolio landlord with five SPVs shouldn't pay five times the price of a single-company director. If you do run several, see our guide to managing multiple companies on Companies House.

What to look for:

• A clear price for the first company and a lower price for each additional one, or a flat rate
• A free tier that's genuinely usable for a single simple company
• Monthly billing available, not only annual contracts

6. Getting Your Data Out

Company secretarial software holds the company's statutory records. If the product is sold, changes its pricing or closes, you need those records back in a form you can use.

What to look for:

• A full export of registers, share events and generated documents, available on every plan
• No charge to leave

Features Only Practices Need

Unless you run an accountancy or company secretarial practice, you don't need:

• Client management and practice billing — for firms invoicing clients, not directors
• Bulk filing across hundreds of companies
• Staff roles and access controls — if you're the only person managing the company
• Client portals — for firms sharing documents with clients

These are the features that put practice software out of a director's price range.

Questions to Ask Before You Buy

1. How many companies do you run? If it's one, almost any tool will cope. If it's three or more, per-company pricing adds up fast.
2. Is the company active or dormant? Dividends, share changes and board decisions are what move you from Category 1 to Category 2.
3. Are all your directors identity-verified? If not, a confirmation statement can't be filed until they are.
4. Who files the accounts? If an accountant files your accounts, you may still be the one keeping the register, issuing dividends and filing the confirmation statement.
5. What's the cost of getting it wrong? A late-accounts penalty for a private company starts at £150 and rises to £1,500, and it's doubled when accounts are late in two successive years (Companies House late filing penalties). Software that costs less than one penalty a year has paid for itself.

How CompanyMinder Fits These Criteria

CompanyMinder is Category 2 software built for directors who run their own companies. Measured against the criteria above:

• Deadlines: add a company by its number and it reads the confirmation statement and accounts due dates from the Companies House register when you add the company; after each filing you add the next deadline yourself. Reminders go out 30, 14, 7 and 1 day before on the Director plan, and 7 and 1 day before on the free plan.
• Records and documents: register of members, share allotments and transfers, auto-numbered share certificates, dividend vouchers (with a distributable-profits confirmation before a voucher is generated), and board minutes and resolutions.
• Companies House: it reads from the register; it doesn't submit filings. You file through Companies House's own online services, with the records and documents prepared.
• Identity verification: officer verification status tracked on the Director plan.
• Pricing: free for a single company's register, basic reminders and one document. The Director plan is £9 a month for the first company and £5 a month for each additional company (or £90 and £50 a year).
• Your data: export is included on every plan, free included.

If you're comparing tools after a provider was acquired or changed its pricing, our guide on choosing company secretarial software in 2026 covers what to check when switching, and our company secretarial software guide goes deeper on what self-filing directors need.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best company secretarial software in the UK? There isn't one answer, because the products serve different buyers. Many of the well-known names are built mainly for accountancy practices. For a director running their own company, the best fit is the tool that covers your actual workload — deadlines for a simple company; deadlines plus the register, share and dividend records for an active one — at a price that doesn't scale badly with the number of companies.

Do I need company secretarial software for one company? Not necessarily. A dormant company with no share changes can manage with reminders. Once the company pays dividends or shares change hands, the register and the paperwork are where software saves real time and avoids errors.

Can company secretarial software file at Companies House for me? Some can. Companies House publishes a list of software that can file changes to a company — check that the product appears on it for the forms you need. Others prepare the records and documents and leave the filing to you.

Is there free company secretarial software? Companies House's online services cost nothing to use as a service, but some filings carry a fee — the confirmation statement is £50 online. Several products, CompanyMinder included, also have a free tier for a single company.

Sources

• Annual report by the independent adjudicators to Companies House, 2024 to 2025 — GOV.UK
• Late filing penalties — GOV.UK
• Companies House personal codes for identity verification — GOV.UK
• Find software to register or file changes to a company — GOV.UK
• Confirmation statement guidance — GOV.UK