What happens after you register a company?
Getting your company registered feels like the finish line, and it’s genuinely satisfying to see it appear on the Companies House register. It’s really the start line though, and a few things need sorting fairly quickly afterward.
Open a business bank account
If you didn’t bundle this in with formation, do it now. Keeping company money separate from personal spending from the very first transaction saves enormous headaches later, both for your own sanity and for HMRC compliance.
Register for Corporation Tax
You typically need to tell HMRC your company is active within a set window after starting to trade, this triggers your Corporation Tax obligations properly. It’s a separate step from the Companies House registration itself, and it’s easy to forget if nobody mentions it.
Sort your accounting setup
Even before you’re trading heavily, decide how you’ll track income and expenses, spreadsheet, free software like Wave, or a paid platform, so you’re not reconstructing months of transactions from memory later.
Understand your filing calendar
Your first confirmation statement and annual accounts deadlines get set based on your incorporation date, mark them somewhere you’ll actually see them. Missing these carries automatic penalties even if the company barely traded that year.
Think about insurance and contracts
Depending on what you do, professional indemnity or public liability insurance may be worth having in place before you take your first client, not after something goes wrong.
Some links here are referral links, if you sign up we may earn a fee at no cost to you, it never changes the order we list things in. Fees and terms change, always check Companies House and the provider’s own site for the current numbers. This is information, not legal advice.