Administration problems
I appreciate what you're saying Peter.................

We've only recently taken over company B and it banks with another banker to company A. Company B doesn't currently have a credit card or overdraft facility and, as the plan is to migrate all banking services to the same banker as company A in the near future, it was quicker/ easier to just add an additional card onto Company A's credit card facility. I appreciate its a little more work in the transition stage but it was a quick solution to the problem at the time, but has subsequently raised a question over the P11D treatment

Accounting entries
In the absence of a paperwork trail, any parties involved in this situation (ie. PAYE/Directors/insolvency/ whoever) will look to the accounting entries made at the time when the payments were made. If the entries are annotated 'dividend', the lack of production of a divi certificate will be viewed as an admin oversight but won't change the classification of the payment. eg. HMRC view postings to the directors current account as being indicative of payment, even if the cash itself hasn't actually been paid out of the bank account, so they do view the accounting records as a valuable source of info! In the absence of any paperwork, the accounting entries effectively become the only record and may provide evidence in support of the divi scenario. It may be worthwhile seeing if you can get access to the accounting records to check how these payments have been identified

Sorry Louise - message for JD
JD - you say you're down south. Where? I know a very good book-keeper looking for work I can recommend. She does our company's book-keeping and also runs her own payroll bureau