1. Go to the Officers tab.

2. Click on the blue 'Appoint Officer' and choose 'Appoint a Corporate Officer'.

Note: if you are appointing an individual (natural person) officer read the related article How do I appoint an individual as a company secretary?

At this stage it does not matter whether the corporate entity is going to be a director or a secretary or both. The term 'Officer' refers to either a director or a secretary.

3. Enter the date of the appointment and select the secretary option.

Note: Subscribers to Inform Direct can choose to leave the date of appointment blank, or enter a future date to prepare the action for approval.

4. Enter the company name and registration number of the corporate entity. After you have entered 5 characters of the company name Inform Direct will start looking for any possible matches. If the name you want appears you can select from the suggestion(s) provided by clicking on the green 'Appoint' box. This way, you will not have to re-enter so much data for that person since much of it will already be known to inform Direct.

5. If the corporate officer is not already known to Inform Direct complete the entry of the company name and registration number and click 'Appoint as new officer'. Note that if the company does not have a registration number it is permissible to enter '00000000'.

6. On the next screen select whether the corporate secretary will be using their principal office or their registered office as their service address. The service address is where government bodies such as Companies House or HMRC will send any correspondence to the corporate officer. Select the service address from the drop down list or if not previously recorded in the system enter a new address.

In the event it is not a UK registered company there will be an additional screen following this which appears as below, you will be asked to confirm the Legal form of the corporate body or firm & Governing law.

7. Corporate officers must be represented by an individual on behalf of the company. Although they usually are, these individuals do not have to be a director or PSC of the new corporate officer. The details of the individual input will not be displayed at Companies House. Enter their details together with 3 pieces of personal information (relating to the individual representing the corporate officer) such as their eye colour or town of birth. Inform Direct allows you to choose which questions you answer.

8. Before submitting the appointment to Companies House there is an opportunity to produce a summary document, this can be used to get approval before making the submission. Selecting Yes will take you through the process to create the approval document.

How do I prepare draft documents to appoint an officer?

Selecting No does not create the summary document and proceeds to step 9 below.

Note: The approval document feature is only available to subscribers to the software. What are the benefits of subscribing to Inform Direct?

9. Inform Direct provides a summary of the proposed appointment. You can see the full details if you click on the 'view details' link. If you are happy that you have correctly recorded all the details click the red 'submit appointment' button.

10. Inform Direct will then process the transaction and will electronically file the appointment request with Companies House. Appointments are normally approved within a few minutes but can take up to 24 hours.

11. If you then return to the list of all the officers you will see the name of the new secretary together with an orange icon marked pending. Once Companies House accept the appointment the orange icon will turn green and read 'current'.

12. Inform Direct will automatically update all the statutory registers.

What should I enter for "governing law", "legal form" and "register" when appointing a corporate secretary?

"Governing law" and "register" are mainly asked for when recording a corporate PSC (RLE) — see How Do I Record an RLE (Corporate PSC)? When appointing a corporate secretary you will usually only be asked for the legal form and governing law (see step 6). Take the values from the corporate secretary's own certificate of incorporation or official registry record — check that first for the precise entry. For a few common cases:

• UK company: governing law "Companies Act 2006"; register "Register of Companies" (specify England & Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland as applicable)
• Irish company: governing law "Companies Act 2014"; register "Companies Registration Office (CRO)"
• Jersey company: governing law "Companies (Jersey) Law 1991"; register "Jersey Financial Services Commission — Companies Registry"
• Guernsey company: governing law "Companies (Guernsey) Law, 2008"; register "Guernsey Registry"
• Delaware (US) company: governing law "Delaware General Corporation Law"; register "Delaware Division of Corporations"

For any other jurisdiction, use that country's principal companies legislation and its official companies registry. Legal form is the type of entity under its own law, for example "Private company limited by shares". You'll also need the corporate secretary's registration number in that register, and its country/state.

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