1. Go to the Officers tab.
2. Click on the blue 'Appoint Officer' and choose 'Appoint a Corporate Officer'.
Note: if you are appointing an individual (natural person) officer read the related article How do I appoint an individual officer?
At this stage it does not matter whether they are going to be a director or a secretary or both. The term 'Officer' refers to either a director or a secretary.
3. Enter the date of the appointment and the type of officer.
Note: Subscribers to Inform Direct can choose to leave the date of appointment blank, or enter a future to prepare the action for approval.
4. Enter the company name and registration number. After you have entered 5 characters of the company name Inform Direct will start looking for any possible matches. If the name you want appears you can 'Select' from the suggestion(s) provided. This way you will not have to re-enter so much data for that person since much of it will already be known to Inform Direct.
5. If the corporate officer is not already known to Inform Direct complete the entry of the company name and registration number and click 'Appoint as new officer'.
Note: If the company does not have a registration number it is permissible to enter '00000000'.
6. On the next screen select whether the company will be using their principal office or their registered office as their service address. The service address is where government bodies such as Companies House or HMRC will send any correspondence to the corporate officer. Select the service address from the list or if not previously recorded in the system enter a new address.
In the event it is not a UK registered company there will be an additional screen following this which appears as below, you will be asked to confirm the Legal form of the corporate body or firm & Governing law.
7. Corporate officers must be represented by an individual on behalf of the company. Although they usually are, these individuals do not have to be a director or PSC of the new corporate officer. The details of the individual input will not be displayed at Companies House. Enter their details together with 3 pieces of personal information (relating to the individual representing the corporate officer) such as their eye colour or town of birth. Inform Direct allows you to choose which questions you answer.
8. Before submitting the appointment to Companies House there is an opportunity to produce a summary document, this can be used to get approval before making the submission. Selecting Yes will take you through the process to create the approval document.
How do I prepare draft documents to appoint an officer?
Selecting No does not create the summary document and proceeds to step 9 below.
Note: The approval document feature is only available to subscribers to the software. What are the benefits of subscribing to Inform Direct?
9. Inform Direct provides a summary of the proposed appointment. You can see the full details if you click on the 'show details' link. If you are happy that you have correctly recorded all the details click the red 'submit appointment' button.
10. Inform Direct will then process the transaction and will electronically file the appointment request with Companies House. Appointments are normally approved within a few minutes but can take up to 24 hours.
11. If you then return to the list of all the officers you will see the name of the new director together with an orange icon marked pending. Once Companies House accept the appointment the orange icon will turn green and read 'current'.
12. Inform Direct will automatically update all the statutory registers.