1. Go to the Officers tab.

2. Click on the blue 'Appoint Officer'

3. Click on the green 'Appoint an Individual as an Officer'.

Note: if you are appointing a corporate secretary read the related article: How do I appoint a corporate secretary ?

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

4. Enter the date of the appointment and whether the individual is going to be a Director, a Secretary (here Secretary means Company Secretary) or both. You do this by ticking the relevant box(es).

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

5. In the next window, start typing the Forename or Surname of the person you are adding, this will check for records of existing people from your portfolio of companies. See How do I select an Existing Person?

Note: The Green icon next to the name indicates that it is the record from within that company. Those without a green icon relate to another company.

6. If the officer is not already known to Inform Direct select the green 'Create new person' button and enter the details requested.

If the person has used any other names for business purposes in the past 20 years, select 'Yes' and enter the previous names.

Note: The maiden names of married women only need to be included if they were used for business purposes.

7.   The email, telephone number and NI number fields are optional. This information will not be sent to Companies House. If you do not want to enter it simply click on the green 'Continue' button.

8. You will then be required to give a service address. The service address is the official address of the company officer. It is the address to which government bodies such as Companies House or HMRC will send any correspondence to the officer. It's quite common for the officer's service address to be the same as the company's registered office address. You can use another address if you prefer.

You either have the option to enter a new address, this includes a postcode search for UK based addresses, or you can use a Previously Entered Address

9. 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 10 below. 

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

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

11. 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.

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

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