Set-and-forget compliance for dormant companies

By Ben Davies · Updated 26 September 2026

A dormant company is the closest thing UK company law has to a parked car — but it still needs an MOT. Every year, no matter how little the company does, the filings are due, and missing them costs £150 to £1,500 a time, doubling if you're late two years in a row.

So how close can you actually get to "set and forget"? Honest answer: very close, but not all the way to zero. Here is what a realistic minimal-effort year looks like, obligation by obligation.

The three annual obligations

A genuinely dormant company has exactly three recurring filings — covered in full in our compliance-without-an-accountant guide:

Accounts: one click a year

This is where the effort genuinely collapses. A dormant company's figures usually don't move from one year to the next — whether its dormant accounts show just share capital or a balance sheet carried from its trading years — so you can turn on autopilot from your company's settings and choose to save your Companies House authentication code (the 6-character code Companies House posts to the company's registered office). We store it encrypted with AES-256-GCM and never log it (see the security page for full details). 30 days before your deadline an email arrives with the prepared accounts. You click once, we file, and you get the result by email. If Companies House rejects anything, the rejection reason is emailed to you and the period re-enters the normal reminders. You can see whether the code is stored and remove it any time from the company's settings — removing it deletes it immediately and permanently and turns autopilot off.

Note the wording: one click a year, not zero. That click is your annual director's confirmation that the company is still dormant — a statement the law needs you, not software, to make. If the company has had any significant accounting transactions, you don't click; you log in and handle the period properly. The same goes for a year in which the company paid a fee from its own bank account, such as the confirmation statement fee: that doesn't end dormancy, but it lowers the company's cash, so the figures need updating.

Also: this works because dormant accounts usually don't change. If the company carries figures from its trading years, autopilot carries them forward too. Micro-entity accounts need fresh figures every year, so autopilot doesn't cover them — we'll always ask you for the numbers.

Confirmation statement: ten minutes and £50

The CS01 confirms your company details are current. It can't meaningfully be automated away, because its whole purpose is you checking that directors, registered office, and shareholdings are still right. DormantFile reminds you when it's due but doesn't file it: you file it yourself at Companies House WebFiling — £50 online — once a year. Pair it with the same calendar slot every year and it stops being a thing you think about. (Our guide on adding deadlines to your calendar covers the mechanics.)

CT600: always yours

If HMRC sends the company a notice to deliver a Company Tax Return, a nil CT600 is due to HMRC — and this one is always filed by you. You sign in with your own Government Gateway credentials at the moment of filing (we never store them), and the statutory deadline for any period you've entered is tracked and reminded — HMRC's letter is always definitive. DormantFile makes the filing itself quick — see how to file a nil CT600 — but there is no autopilot for it, by design.

Not every dormant company needs one: once HMRC has recorded the company as dormant for Corporation Tax, it stops sending notices, and with no notice there is no return to file. A notice that does arrive must still be answered. Check our guide on whether you need a CT600.

The realistic annual routine

Put together, a well-set-up dormant company year looks like this:

1. Accounts email arrives 30 days before the deadline → one click → done, result by email.
2. CS01 month: ten minutes on WebFiling, £50.
3. CT600 (if needed): a few minutes filing a nil return with your Gateway login.

Everything else — knowing your accounts dates, the reminder emails at 90/30/14/7/3/1 days, preparing the accounts, the submission, the proof of filing — happens without you. If you're running several dormant companies, the same routine just repeats per company.

A few things run in the background too. DormantFile reads the Companies House register to show which directors still have to verify their identity and reminds you before each one's date — the verifying itself is theirs to do. It checks the register daily for changes you didn't make to the company's directors, address, owners or name, and for a strike-off notice. And when a letter from HMRC or Companies House lands, photograph it and the letter decoder tells you what it is and what's due.

Key points

• True zero-effort compliance doesn't exist — and shouldn't, because dormancy must be confirmed by a director each year. But you can get to roughly one click plus twenty minutes per year.
• Accounts: autopilot prepares and files on your one-click confirmation; rejections are emailed with the reason and fall back to reminders.
• CS01: yours to file, £50, ten minutes — we remind you, we don't file it. CT600: always yours, with your own HMRC login — autopilot never touches it.
• In the background: directors' identity verification reminders, a daily register check for changes you didn't make and for strike-off notices, and help with any letter you photograph.
• Autopilot is for dormant accounts only; micro-entity accounts need fresh figures yearly.
• Start by seeing where you stand: the free Companies House audit tool shows what's outstanding, and the deadline calculator gives you your dates. Then see how DormantFile works — from £19/year (pricing).