Make corrections after filing end-of-year Final Accounts and Corporation Tax returns

This article explains which options are available if you need to make a correction in your accounts after you’ve filed either or both your Final Accounts and Corporation Tax return in FreeAgent.

FreeAgent’s end-of-year report for a limited company includes a full set of accounts, a shortened version and Corporation Tax (CT600) return(s). Once you have finalised your company’s end-of-year report by adding your signature, this places a lock on your accounts to prevent you from making any further changes. You can remove this lock to make changes to your accounts.

If you find that there are errors within your accounts after you’ve filed either or both your Final Accounts and Corporation Tax return, you can either unlock your end-of-year report to make the corrections this year or make the corrections next year.

To correct the company name, address, registration number or Corporation Tax Reference (UTR), the end-of-year report needs to be unlocked for the updated details to pull through from the Company Details settings area.

Please note that FreeAgent can’t advise which option you should choose and we would strongly recommend discussing the options with your accountant before deciding which is the best way forward for your business.

If you haven’t yet filed your Final Accounts or Corporation Tax return

If you haven’t yet filed either your Final Accounts or Corporation Tax return through FreeAgent, you can unlock the end-of-year reports and make changes to your accounts. 

Navigate to the ‘Accounting’ tab at the top of the screen and select ‘End of Year’ from the drop-down menu.

Select ‘Unlock End of Year’.

Select ‘Unlock End of Year’ in the pop-up window to complete the process.

This will mark your Corporation Tax return and/or Final Accounts report as unfiled. You’ll now be able to make changes to your accounts and finalise your end-of-year report again once you’ve made the relevant changes.

If you’re not planning to re-approve your end-of-year report, we would advise you to add an account lock for the period that your end-of-year covers, to prevent any future changes being made to this period.

If you’ve filed either or both your Final Accounts and Corporation Tax return

If you find that there are errors within your accounts after you’ve filed either or both your Final Accounts and Corporation Tax return, you can either make the corrections next year or unlock your end-of-year report to make the corrections this year.

If you’re unsure which option is the best way forward for your business, please ask your accountant.

Make the corrections next year

If you’ve already filed either or both of your end-of-year report for the relevant accounting year through FreeAgent, you can leave your accounts as they currently are. This will allow you to include any corrections for your current year’s accounts when you submit your Final Accounts and Corporation Tax return next year.

The FRS 105 reporting standard for micro entities states under 5.4: “An entity shall recognise all items of income and expense in a period in profit or loss unless an FRS requires or permits otherwise, or unless prohibited by the Act. For example, under this FRS, the effects of corrections of material errors and changes in accounting policies are presented as retrospective adjustments of prior periods rather than as part of profit or loss in the period in which they arise (see Section 8 Accounting Policies, Estimates and Errors).”

There’s also further guidance under 8.14 – 8.17 Corrections of prior period errors: “To the extent practicable, a micro-entity shall correct a material prior period error retrospectively in the first financial statements authorised for issue after its discovery.”

Unlock your end-of-year reports

Alternatively, you can unlock your Final Accounts report and Corporation Tax return if you’d prefer to fix the errors this year.

If you’ve already filed your original end-of-year accounts, you may need to submit amended accounts to include any changes. Please note that it’s not currently possible to file amended Final Accounts through FreeAgent, therefore you’ll need to file your amended accounts with Companies House directly if you make any changes to your Final Accounts. Please see this official guidance for more information.

If you choose to unlock your end-of-year report, we would strongly advise that you save copies of all the relevant reports that might be needed before the filing confirmation is removed. This will provide you with a record of the reports outside of FreeAgent should you need to look back at how they were before the filing confirmation and account lock were removed, and any changes subsequently made.

We would also recommend you take a note or a screenshot of the submission details, in particular the submission number, as they will be deleted from your FreeAgent account once you unlock your end-of-year report and Corporation Tax return.

Unlocking your end-of-year accounts

Navigate to the ‘Accounting’ tab at the top of the screen and select ‘End of Year’ from the drop-down menu.

Select ‘Unlock End of Year’.

Tick the box(es) if you want to add copies of the filed Final Accounts and/or Corporation Tax computations and forms to your Files area and select ‘Unlock End of Year’.

Please note that this will not 'un-file' the accounts with Companies House and/or CT600 with HMRC, but will remove the record of it being filed from your FreeAgent account, as well as the submission receipt/IR mark.

Once the necessary changes have been made, you can manually mark your Final Accounts as filed in FreeAgent by navigating to the relevant report and selecting ‘Mark as filed’.

FreeAgent will automatically mark the Corporation Tax return as ‘amended’ when you unlock the return but you can also check this by selecting ‘Edit Details’ and making sure the ‘Are you making an amendment’ option is set to ‘yes’.

Once the necessary changes have been made, you would need to consider whether this would then require you to file an amended CT600 with HMRC to match your final accounts, otherwise you'd have two different sets of accounts on record, one with Companies House and the other with HMRC.

If you do need to file an amended CT600, you’ll have the option to re-file an amended CT600 through FreeAgent by selecting ‘File online with HMRC’.

If you don't need to file an amended CT600, you can manually mark your Corporation Tax return as filed in FreeAgent by navigating to the relevant report and selecting ‘Mark as filed’.