Companies House ID verification: chase every director client before their due date

Who it’s for

UK accountants and bookkeepers who file confirmation statements for limited company clients

Time to set up

1 hour once, then 10 minutes a week

Difficulty

Beginner

Monthly cost

£0

Key dates for this: see UK small-business admin deadlines.

You help a UK accountancy practice chase Companies House identity verification. Below is a table of directors and PSCs. For each row, work out the due window using ONLY these rules: (1) a director gives their personal code with the company's next confirmation statement; (2) a PSC who is also a director of that company gives it in the 14 days starting the day after the confirmation statement date; (3) a PSC who is not a director gives it in the first 14 days of their birth month; (4) someone who became a PSC after 18 November 2025 gives it on being added or within 14 days. Never guess a date: if anything is missing, add a short note in brackets saying in plain words what to check, for example (check the confirmation statement date on the register). Skip anyone marked code received. Output: (a) a table sorted by due date: name, company, role, due window, days from today; (b) a short, friendly reminder email for each person not yet verified, saying what to do (verify with GOV.UK One Login, or ask whether they can use the Post Office), and asking them to send us the personal code, with this link: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/verify-your-identity-for-companies-house. British English. No legal advice. Today is [date].
Table: [paste]

Here’s the trap in Companies House ID verification: everyone has heard “you’ve got 12 months from 18 November 2025”, so lots of directors think they have until the transition ends 17 November 2026. GOV.UK says the opposite in its first paragraph: 18 November 2025 “is not a deadline”. Each existing director’s real due date is their company’s next confirmation statement. For a client with a December statement date, that was about 10 months ago.

Companies House estimated that 6 to 7 million people would need to verify by mid-November 2026 (Companies House). Some of them are your clients, and they’ll ring you when a filing bounces. This guide gives you one sheet of every director and PSC across your book, sorted by the date that actually applies, with a reminder drafted for each.

What does this automation do?

1. You list every director and person with significant control (PSC) across your clients in a Google Sheet.
2. The sheet holds each person’s role, the company’s confirmation statement date and whether they’ve sent you their personal code.
3. Once a week, ChatGPT sorts the list by due window and drafts a friendly reminder for everyone still outstanding.
4. You check the drafts, send them, and tick off codes as they arrive. Make can draft the weekly batch for you.

What do you need before you start?

• Your client list with company numbers.
• Each company’s confirmation statement date, from your practice software or the Companies House register.
• A free ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini account, and Google Sheets.

How do I set it up?

Step 1: Understand whose deadline is when

The rules are on GOV.UK (when you need to verify):

Two details catch people out. A director who is also a PSC gives the code twice: once in the confirmation statement, once through the PSC service. And if the company files its confirmation statement early, the PSC’s 14 days don’t move.

The legal basis for existing directors is regulation 4 of SI 2025/1118: the identity verification statement goes in “at the same time as the company delivers its next confirmation statement” during the transitional period (legislation.gov.uk).

Identity verification for corporate directors, LLP corporate members, officers of corporate PSCs and people who file at Companies House is coming “at a later date”. Not yet.

Step 2: List every director and PSC in one sheet

One row per person per role per company. Columns:

Keep the personal codes themselves out of the sheet if you can: record “received” and the date, and keep the code where you keep the filing.

Step 3: Work out each person’s due window

For a PSC who is also a director, with the confirmation statement date in E2:

• Window start: =E2+1
• Window end: =E2+14

That gives 14 days starting the day after: for a 30 October statement date, 31 October to 13 November.

For a PSC who isn’t a director, the window is the 1st to the 14th of their birth month. The Companies House register shows each person’s exact dates, and it’s worth checking against it once: GOV.UK points you there too.

Then add a “days to go” column, =F2-TODAY(), and conditional formatting: red under 14 days, amber under 30.

Step 4: Let ChatGPT sort the list and draft the reminders

Paste the rows into the copy-paste prompt. It applies only the GOV.UK rules above, flags anything missing for you to check on the register rather than guessing, and drafts one short email per person. The worked example above shows the output for four invented clients.

Check every date before anything goes out. The model is doing the drafting; you’re the one who knows the client.

Step 5: Send, then record the personal code

Clients need to know three things, and the reminder covers all three:

• The usual route: verify online with GOV.UK One Login using a biometric passport (any country), a UK photo driving licence (full or provisional), or a UK BRP, BRC or Frontier Worker permit (GOV.UK). They’ll also need their current address and the year they moved in.
• If the app won’t work for them: UK residents can find out whether they can verify at the Post Office, or with bank or building society details plus their National Insurance number. Expired documents don’t work on either route.
• Their own email address. An email address can only be used once to verify an identity. If a husband and wife share one inbox, one of them needs a new address. Worth saying up front.

When the code arrives, tick the row and file the code with that company’s papers.

Step 6: Decide whether to register as an authorised agent

You can verify clients’ identities yourself if your practice registers as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP), also called a Companies House authorised agent (GOV.UK). You need:

• active supervision by a UK anti-money laundering supervisory body, with the membership number matching exactly (Companies House rejects the application if it doesn’t)
• a senior role (director, partner, member) or to be a sole trader
• your own verified identity
• the £63 registration fee, paid by card (Companies House); HMRC’s internal manual (ECSH32734) gives £55, but we use the Companies House page figure

GOV.UK also says that “in the future, businesses will also need to register as an authorised agent to be able to file on behalf of clients”. It doesn’t give a date. If you file for clients, that’s the reason to register now rather than in a queue later.

Step 7: Optional: let Make draft the weekly reminders

Before you paste your key into Make

Give this scenario its own expiring OpenAI API key. In Project settings › Limits, set a monthly spend limit and turn on Enforce a hard limit, because “Spend alerts alone don’t stop API traffic.” (You need to be the project owner to set it.) Once the cap is hit, OpenAI stops the calls (spend can go slightly over), which beats a surprise bill. Key leaked? Replace it at once on the API keys page (OpenAI: Best practices for API key safety).

1. Schedule: Monday 8am.
2. Google Sheets › Search rows where “Code received?” is N and “days to go” is under 30.
3. OpenAI (ChatGPT, Whisper) › Generate a completion with the reminder part of the prompt, one row at a time.
4. Gmail › Create a draft email to the client. It’s a draft, so you read it before it goes.
5. Google Sheets › Update a row with today’s date in “Date chased”.

Make Free gives 1,000 credits a month; each reminder uses about 3 (completion, draft and row update, with the weekly search shared), so it covers roughly 300 reminders a month, plus OpenAI API costs. The OpenAI step uses the OpenAI API, not your ChatGPT account: you need an API key and credit on the OpenAI billing page, paid as you go and separate from ChatGPT Free. We haven’t run this scenario end to end; Steps 3 and 4 do the same job by hand in 10 minutes.

The copy-paste prompt

You help a UK accountancy practice chase Companies House identity
verification. Below is a table of directors and PSCs. For each row, work out
the due window using ONLY these rules: (1) a director gives their personal
code with the company's next confirmation statement; (2) a PSC who is also a
director of that company gives it in the 14 days starting the day after the
confirmation statement date; (3) a PSC who is not a director gives it in the
first 14 days of their birth month; (4) someone who became a PSC after 18
November 2025 gives it on being added or within 14 days. Never guess a date:
if anything is missing, add a short note in brackets saying in plain words
what to check, for example (check the confirmation statement date on the
register). Skip anyone marked code received. Output: (a) a table sorted by due
date: name, company, role, due window, days from today; (b) a short, friendly
reminder email for each person not yet verified, saying what to do (verify
with GOV.UK One Login, or ask whether they can use the Post Office), and
asking them to send us the personal code, with this link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/verify-your-identity-for-companies-house. British
English. No legal advice. Today is [date].
Table: [paste]

What can go wrong?

• Treating mid-November as everyone’s deadline. It’s the end of the transition, not the due date. Sort by confirmation statement date.
• Forgetting the second code. Director and PSC of the same company? The code goes in twice, through two different services.
• Shared email addresses. One address, one verified identity.
• Paying a stranger to “verify” someone. GOV.UK’s fraud warning is blunt: don’t let others use your identity to set up or run a company, because “you will be legally responsible” for debts taken out in your name. If a client mentions a cheap online verification offer, check the provider is on the ACSP list.
• Data. The prompt needs names, roles and dates. It doesn’t need dates of birth, passport numbers or personal codes, so don’t paste them.

Once the codes are in, the next client headache is usually paperwork: our guide to chasing missing client documents automatically uses the same sheet-plus-drafts approach. And one practical automation like this, with the £ and the time it saves, lands in your inbox every Friday if you join our free email.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. GOV.UK: Verify your identity for Companies House (updated 30 April 2026)
2. GOV.UK: When you need to verify your identity for Companies House (updated 30 July 2026)
3. GOV.UK: Companies House confirms identity verification rollout from 18 November 2025
4. legislation.gov.uk: SI 2025/1118, regulation 4 (transitional provision for existing directors)
5. GOV.UK: Applying to register as a Companies House authorised agent
6. Companies House: Apply to register as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (£63 fee)

This guide is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Tool prices and screens change; we re-check every guide regularly. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.