Showing employee numbers at Companies House

Showing employee numbers on micro entity accounts filed at Companies House

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I am aware that from accounting period starting on or after 1 January 2016 (or possibly 1 January 2017) that employee numbers must be shown on accounts prepared under FRS102 and FRS105.  I am particularly interested in the latter.

I appreciate that the advice appears to be to show employee numbers on the annual financial statements.  This has been backed up by ICAEW.  See extract of question 8 below.  I have no issues with showing the employee numbers in the financial statements.

I always use the Companies House website online filing template to file my micro-entity accounts (formerly abbreviated accounts).  I can categorically confirm that there is no box to enter employee numbers in.

Based on advice from ICAEW I believe employee numbers should be shown at Companies House.  However, how would you disclose them as there is no box to complete.

There is a box relating to the other disclosures e.g. overdrawn directors loans & guarantees etc.  Would people use that or has some specific advice or guidance been issued to say that we should not be showing employee numbers at Companies House?

The following is an extract from 'Filing options under the new small companies regime published by ICAEW' which can be viewed at https://www.icaew.com/-/media/corporate/files/technical/financial-report...

8. Can I exclude details of employee numbers from the ‘filleted’ accounts?

As noted above, if a profit and loss account is not filed, there is no need to file any notes that relate specifically to it. There has, however, been some debate about whether the ‘employee numbers’ note is or isn’t a profit and loss account note and whether it can or can’t be omitted. Some of this confusion seems to have arisen as paragraph 1AC.33 of FRS 102 suggests that this information is a note ‘supporting the income statement’.

In our view, however, the ‘employee numbers’ note is not a note related to the profit and loss account since it does not relate to a specific profit and loss line item. Therefore a company choosing not to file the profit and loss account and the related notes would still be required to include details of employee numbers in the accounts filed at Companies House.

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By Tim Vane
08th Jul 2018 22:44

I don't think this is an issue for accountants since all commercial sofware (which is what accountants use) will include the employee disclosure - I think it is highly likely that all commercial sofware has now been updated for the recent changes to FRS 105.

I suspect that Companies House software takes a little longer to amend than the commercial offerings so no doubt they are still working on it and accounts filed DIY by small companies will still be wrong - but then DIY accounts are almost always hilariously wrong anyway so I don't think it makes any difference.

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By thomas34
09th Jul 2018 09:33

Agree with Tim - I'm pretty sure that for FRS105 it's accounting periods commencing on or after 1 January 2017. Companies House are notorious for being out of date - for years they quoted an out of date FRSSE on their balance sheet notes template.

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By stuartb
21st Dec 2018 14:21

Response in the last couple of days from CH to my enquiry was that we'd need to file abridged accounts to be able to do this. Or file microentity accounts on paper.

They confirmed that neither their Webfiling or HMRC CATO have the ability to add this note even though it's a requirement.

Stuart

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