Terms of Service

Last updated: 26 September 2026

These terms govern your use of the DormantFile website and service. By creating an account or using the service, you agree to be bound by these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

1. About the service

DormantFile provides a software tool that enables directors of dormant and non-trading UK limited companies (including companies limited by guarantee, such as flat management and RTM companies), and designated members of dormant and non-trading UK limited liability partnerships (LLPs), to:

• File dormant company accounts (where the company is genuinely dormant, whether its balance sheet is empty, shows only share capital, or carries figures the company still holds from earlier years), FRS 105 micro-entity accounts (where the company is non-trading but has accounting transactions, such as a Bounce Back Loan), dormant LLP accounts (where the LLP is genuinely dormant), or FRS 105 micro-entity LLP accounts (where the LLP is non-trading but has accounting transactions) with Companies House.
• File nil CT600 Corporation Tax returns with HMRC (companies only — an LLP is taxed as a partnership and files no CT600).
• File a nil SA800 partnership tax return with HMRC for a dormant LLP, for a tax year HMRC has asked the LLP to file for.

We are not an accountancy firm, tax adviser, or regulated financial services provider. We provide software only.

The service also includes deadline reminders and monitoring: reminders of your company's accounts and confirmation statement deadlines, and of any Corporation Tax or partnership return deadline you add; a daily check of the public register for changes you did not make to the company's officers, registered office, people with significant control, name, share capital or charges, and for strike-off notices; and the identity verification status of your company's directors, LLP members and people with significant control, as the register shows it. We take reasonable care to send reminders on time and report the register accurately, but they depend on the public register and the dates you give us, and an email can go astray. We do not file confirmation statements or verify anyone's identity, and as a director or designated member you remain responsible for your company's or LLP's deadlines.

It also includes three things that help you understand and respond to what your company is being asked to do: a compliance assistant, a letter decoder, and penalty appeal letters. All three are described in section 8.

The service is designed for companies that are not trading during the accounting period — whether genuinely dormant, or non-trading with limited transactions such as a loan being repaid. It is not suitable for trading companies, and DormantFile does not file full or small-company (FRS 102) accounts. If your company is trading, you must use a qualified accountant. You are responsible for determining which type of accounts your company is required to file; if you are unsure, seek professional advice.

2. Eligibility

To use DormantFile, you must:

• Be a director or authorised officer of a UK limited company registered at Companies House, or a designated member (or authorised representative) of a UK LLP registered at Companies House — or, on the agent plan, an accountant or agent who holds authority from each company or LLP you file for.
• Confirm that your company or LLP was not trading during the accounting period being filed, and that it qualifies for the type of accounts you choose (dormant or micro-entity under the Companies Act 2006, as applied to LLPs where relevant).
• For CT600 filings: hold a valid HMRC Government Gateway account for Corporation Tax — or, on the agent plan, an agent Government Gateway account authorised to act for the company.
• For SA800 filings: hold a valid HMRC Government Gateway account enrolled for the partnership's Self Assessment.
• For accounts filings: hold a valid Companies House authentication code for your company.

3. Your account

You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. You must notify us immediately at hello@dormantfile.co.uk if you become aware of any unauthorised use.

If you sign in with Google, your Google account is your credential. Anyone who can use your Google account can use your DormantFile account, so you are responsible for keeping it secure. If a Google account and a DormantFile account share the same verified email address, we treat them as the same account.

4. How the service works

DormantFile submits filings to HMRC and Companies House on your behalf. Filings to Companies House and filings to HMRC handle your credentials differently:

Companies House accounts

When you file dormant accounts, you provide your six-character Companies House authentication code. This code is:

• Entered at the point of filing.
• Transmitted to Companies House as part of the submission.
• Used transiently for one-off filings and not retained. It is stored — encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) — only if you choose to save it, for example for annual autopilot. A saved code is never displayed again and never logged, and you can remove it at any time from the company's settings.

HMRC CT600 and SA800

When you file a nil CT600 return, or a nil SA800 partnership return for an LLP, you provide your HMRC Government Gateway user ID and password. These credentials are:

• Used only at the moment of submission to authenticate with HMRC.
• Transmitted directly to HMRC over an encrypted (TLS) connection.
• Never written to our database or stored on our servers.
• Discarded from server memory immediately after HMRC responds.

By providing your credentials for a filing, you authorise DormantFile to submit the relevant return on your behalf for the specified accounting period.

If you turn on annual autopilot and save your Companies House authentication code, you authorise us to prepare each year's dormant accounts and to submit them once you have confirmed that year's filing by email. We never submit an autopilot filing without that confirmation, and you can turn autopilot off, or remove the saved code, at any time.

On the agent plan, you may submit a CT600 using your own Government Gateway credentials, declared to HMRC as agent. By doing so you confirm that you hold authority from the company to file on its behalf, and you remain responsible to your client for the filing.

For more detail on how we handle your data, see our privacy policy and security practices.

5. Accuracy of information

You are responsible for ensuring that all information you provide is accurate and complete. This includes your company name, company registration number, Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR), accounting period dates, Companies House authentication code, and HMRC Gateway credentials.

DormantFile is not responsible for filings made with incorrect information that you gave us.

This includes any detail — a Unique Taxpayer Reference, a Corporation Tax accounting period, a Companies House authentication code — that you confirm from a letter read by the letter decoder (section 8). We show you what the letter appears to say; nothing is saved until you confirm it, and you are responsible for checking it against the letter first.

Before you file, we show you every balance sheet figure — including any we read from the register or carry forward from an earlier filing — so you can check them against the company's own records. As a director or designated member you approve the accounts and are responsible for them. That does not change our own duty to read and carry forward figures with reasonable care.

6. Subscription and payment

The service is billed as a subscription — annually, or as a single payment covering three years where you choose that option. An active subscription is required to submit a filing — preparing a return is free, and you subscribe when you are ready to file. Current prices are displayed on our website at the time of purchase. Payments are processed securely by Stripe.

• Your subscription renews automatically at the end of each term (yearly, or every 3 years on a 3-year plan) unless cancelled.
• You may cancel at any time from your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period, after which your company stays on our free deadline watchdog.
• We do not offer refunds for partial billing periods, subject to your cooling-off rights below.
• If you close your account part-way through a 3-year plan, we refund any full years you have not yet started. All refunds must be requested in writing by email.

One-off charges

Not everything we sell is part of the subscription. A penalty appeal letter is a single purchase of £9.99, charged once per letter, and can be bought on any plan — including the free deadline watchdog. It is not a subscription, it does not renew, and buying one does not give you a subscription or any right to file. Section 8 describes what it is, section 7 explains your cancellation rights over it, and the refund and cancellation policy sets out when it is refunded.

For full details, see our refund and cancellation policy.

7. Your right to cancel

Under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, you have the right to cancel within 14 days of the date you subscribe, without giving a reason.

Because you subscribe in order to file, you are explicitly asking the service to begin during the cooling-off period. The test for a refund is simple: if you cancel within those 14 days and we have not yet had a filing accepted for you by Companies House or HMRC, you receive a full refund.

Once a filing has been accepted, the core service has been performed and delivered to the register and cannot be un-filed, so the fee is non-refundable (on a 3-year plan, the current year is forfeited and full years not yet started remain refundable under section 6). A submission that was rejected does not count as an accepted filing — if everything you have submitted was rejected, you remain eligible for a full refund within the 14 days.

Your subscription covers every filing attempt, not a single return. A rejected return has not been delivered to the register: you can correct and resubmit it as many times as you need, until it is accepted, at no extra charge. The Corporation Tax return we file is always nil, but the figures in your accounts are entered by you, so we cannot guarantee that a particular set of numbers will be accepted. Fixing and resubmitting a rejected filing is always free.

Penalty appeal letters

A penalty appeal letter is digital content, produced for you the moment you pay. We tell you so at the checkout, before you pay: by paying you ask us to produce the letter immediately, and you accept that once it has been produced the 14-day right to cancel no longer applies to it. That is the express request and acknowledgement the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 require.

This applies to that letter only. It never affects your subscription, and your subscription's own 14-day right is untouched by buying one.

If you pay and no letter is produced, you have paid for nothing and we refund you in full.

For full details, see our refund and cancellation policy.

8. Not professional advice

DormantFile is software, not an accountancy practice, tax adviser, or regulated financial services provider. We do not provide accounting, tax, or legal advice.

Filing via DormantFile is done on your own authority as a company director or authorised officer. You are responsible for determining whether your company qualifies as dormant under the Companies Act 2006.

If you are in any doubt about your company's dormancy status, consult a qualified accountant before using the service.

Compliance assistant

The assistant built into the service answers questions about UK dormant-company filing, and on paid plans can read your company and filing data to do so. Its answers are general information generated by an AI model. They are not tax, accounting or legal advice, they may be incomplete or wrong, and you should check anything you intend to rely on. The assistant never files, submits or pays anything itself — every filing is confirmed by you in the filing flow.

Letter decoder

The letter decoder reads a photograph or scan of a letter from HMRC or Companies House and explains, in plain English, what it appears to be, what it appears to ask for, and by when. The reading is produced by an AI model. It is general information, not tax, accounting or legal advice, and it can misread a letter: a date, an amount, a reference or a company name may be wrong, and a letter may be classified as the wrong type. The letter itself is always definitive. Check what we tell you against the letter before you act on it, and if the two differ, follow the letter. Where the decoder points out signs that a letter may not be genuine, that is a prompt to check with the sender, not a determination either way.

The decoder never files, submits or pays anything. On a paid plan it can offer to save a detail it has read — a Unique Taxpayer Reference, a Corporation Tax accounting period, an authentication code — to your company's record. Nothing is saved unless you confirm it, and once you do, section 5 applies to it as information you have provided.

You may only upload letters sent to a company or LLP you are entitled to act for. A letter you upload before creating an account is held for up to 48 hours so that signing up can keep it, and is deleted otherwise. Our privacy policy explains how uploaded letters are stored, who reads them and when they are deleted.

Penalty appeal letters

Where the decoder reads an HMRC penalty determination or a Companies House late filing penalty, we check it against your own filing record and the public register and tell you, free of charge, whether there appears to be anything to argue. Where there is — or where you tell us the penalty arose from exceptional circumstances — you can buy an appeal letter for £9.99. Nothing is written before you pay, and where the record does not support a ground we say so instead of writing a letter that was never going to work.

We do not advise you. The heading above this section applies here as much as anywhere else. We are not your accountant, your tax adviser or your solicitor, and nothing in the grounds check is advice. What we do is mechanical: we compare the penalty against your own filing record and the public register and report what they show. Whether those facts are worth appealing on, and whether to appeal at all, is your decision.

The letter is yours, not ours. It is written in your company's name, from your company's registered office, addressed to HMRC or Companies House, and signed by you. Every statement in it is either a fact we already hold about your company, a fact taken from the public register, or something you have told us and confirmed. You are its author and its signatory. Before you send it, or ask us to post it, you must read it and satisfy yourself that everything in it is true. Making a false or misleading statement to HMRC or Companies House is a serious matter, and the responsibility for what the letter says is yours.

We do not promise an outcome. Whether a penalty is cancelled, reduced or upheld is entirely a matter for HMRC or Companies House. We tell you what the record supports and write the best letter that record allows. We do not guarantee that an appeal will succeed. The fee is for the letter, not for the result, and an appeal that is refused is not a failure to deliver what you bought.

This is not legal representation. We are not solicitors, we do not act as your agent before HMRC or Companies House, and we do not represent you in any proceedings. What you buy is a single document. We do not handle replies, second-stage reviews, escalation to HMRC's Senior Casework Unit, referral to the Companies House Independent Adjudicator, or an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal. If your appeal is refused and you want to take it further, that is yours to pursue, and you may wish to take professional advice.

Deadlines are yours to meet. An appeal normally has a time limit — for an HMRC penalty determination, usually 30 days from the date printed on the notice. We show you the date we have read from your letter, but as with the letter decoder above, the letter itself is always definitive. Deciding when to appeal, and getting the appeal there in time, is your responsibility.

Posting. You can download and print the letter and send it yourself at no extra charge. If you ask us to post it, we hand it to a printing and postage contractor who prints it and puts it into the post. We do not offer recorded, tracked or signed-for delivery, and we cannot confirm that a letter was received — only that it was dispatched. Once a letter has been handed over for posting it cannot be recalled, amended or cancelled.

We never provide an address. Replies go to your company's registered office, or to another address you choose. They never come to us. We do not receive, open, hold or forward mail on your behalf, and our name and address appear nowhere on your letter.

An appeal does not replace a filing. Where HMRC has asked for a Corporation Tax return, that return remains due whether or not you appeal, and appealing does not pause its deadline. Where Companies House has charged a late filing penalty, the accounts remain outstanding until they are delivered.

9. Service availability

We aim to keep the service available at all times but do not guarantee uninterrupted access. The service depends on HMRC and Companies House systems being operational. We are not liable for downtime caused by third-party maintenance, outages, or changes to their APIs or filing gateways.

10. Limitation of liability

Subject to the rights listed at the end of this section:

• We are not liable for any penalties, fines, or charges imposed by HMRC or Companies House — including late-filing penalties — that arise from your use of the service, except where the penalty results from our failure to perform the service with reasonable care and skill — for example, a missed reminder caused by our error, or a filing we told you was accepted when it was not.
• Our total liability to you for any claim arising from the service is limited to the total you paid for the subscription term in which the claim arose or, for a claim about a penalty appeal letter, the price of that letter.
• We are not liable for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable when you started using the service, or for business losses such as loss of profit or business opportunity.

In relation to penalty appeal letters specifically:

• We are not liable for the outcome of an appeal. Whether a penalty is cancelled, reduced or upheld is decided by HMRC or Companies House alone.
• We are not liable for a posted letter being delayed, lost, or not acted on once it has been handed into the postal system. We do not offer recorded delivery and we do not guarantee receipt.
• We are not liable for a penalty, interest or other charge that arises because you appealed instead of filing, appealed after the deadline, or relied on a date we read from your letter rather than on the letter itself.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for:

• Death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
• Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Performing the service with reasonable care and skill, and the other statutory rights the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you if you are a consumer.
• Any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded under the laws of England and Wales.

11. Force majeure

We are not liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations where that failure or delay results from events beyond our reasonable control. This includes, but is not limited to: HMRC or Companies House outages, changes in government policy or filing requirements, internet or telecommunications disruptions, power failures, and acts of God.

12. Your responsibilities

You agree that:

• You will only use the service for companies and LLPs that are not trading: genuinely dormant companies filing dormant accounts; non-trading companies that qualify for the micro-entity regime filing FRS 105 accounts with a nil Corporation Tax return; genuinely dormant LLPs filing dormant LLP accounts; non-trading LLPs that qualify for the micro-entity regime filing FRS 105 micro-entity LLP accounts; and, where HMRC has asked for one, a nil SA800 partnership return.
• You will not use the service to file fraudulent or misleading returns.
• You remain ultimately responsible for your company's tax and filing obligations.
• You will check that your filing has been accepted by HMRC or Companies House and follow up on any rejections or queries.
• You will only upload to the letter decoder letters that were sent to a company or LLP you are entitled to act for.
• You will read any appeal letter before it goes, and will only send — or ask us to post — a letter whose every statement you know to be true.
• You will only buy an appeal letter for a penalty issued to a company or LLP you are entitled to act for, and will sign it in your own name.
• You will meet the deadline for any appeal yourself, treating the notice itself as definitive.

13. Referral programme

Any account holder may share a referral link. When someone creates an account through your link and subscribes to a paid plan, they receive £5 off their first year, and once their first filing is accepted by Companies House or HMRC, we pay you £5 by bank transfer or voucher. One reward is paid per referred person. Rewards are not paid for referring yourself, an account you control, or someone who already has a DormantFile account, and we may withhold or reclaim a reward where we reasonably suspect abuse. We may change or withdraw the programme at any time; rewards already earned will still be paid.

14. Termination

We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these terms or use the service in a way that is harmful, fraudulent, or illegal. We will give you reasonable notice where practicable.

We run our own anti-money laundering and fraud monitoring, and we may pause, decline, or cancel a filing — or end the service — where those checks cannot be satisfied. In some circumstances the law prevents us from explaining why. See our anti-money laundering policy.

You may close your account at any time by contacting us or using the account settings in the application.

15. Complaints

If you are unhappy with any aspect of the service, please contact us at hello@dormantfile.co.uk. We will acknowledge your complaint and aim to resolve it promptly.

If you are dissatisfied with our response, you may escalate the matter through the dispute resolution process described below.

16. Dispute resolution

In accordance with the Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015, we are required to inform you that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is available for consumer disputes.

We are not obliged to use, and do not currently participate in, an alternative dispute resolution scheme. If we are unable to resolve your complaint to your satisfaction, you may wish to seek independent legal advice.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email or by placing a notice on the website. Your continued use of the service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

If you do not agree with the updated terms, you should stop using the service and close your account.

18. Electronic Commerce Regulations

In compliance with the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002, we provide the following information:

• Service provider: Benjamin Davies, trading as DormantFile
• Contact email: hello@dormantfile.co.uk

19. Governing law

These terms are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes arising from or in connection with these terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

If you are a consumer, you also benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which you are resident, and nothing in these terms affects your rights as a consumer to rely on such provisions.

20. Contact

If you have questions about these terms, contact us at hello@dormantfile.co.uk.