As of 13 August 2026, AI cannot prepare your company annual accounts for Companies House.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface gets you a draft, but you cannot verify it yourself. That is the catch.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the current annual accounts guidance on GOV.UK and Companies House, and save the relevant filing and accounting-framework pages for your company.
   2. Gather the final trial balance, general ledger, bank reconciliations, prior-year accounts, fixed-asset register, stock records, payroll summary, loan statements, director transactions, dividends and any supporting invoices.
   3. Remove unnecessary personal information from the records, then paste the company details, official guidance and source figures into a chatbot with the prompt above.
   4. Ask the chatbot to produce the draft accounts, source trail, missing-information list and filing checklist, and to mark every judgement it cannot resolve.
   5. Compare every drafted figure with the trial balance and reconciliations, then compare the company details, accounting framework and checklist with the official GOV.UK and Companies House guidance you opened.
   6. Send the draft, source records, unresolved questions and reconciliation evidence to a qualified accountant for review, correction and confirmation of what the directors must approve and submit.

   Prompt

   You are helping prepare a working draft of UK company annual accounts for review by a qualified accountant. Do not present the result as filing-ready, do not invent figures or accounting policies, and do not decide uncertain treatments without flagging them.
   
   Company details:
   - Company name: [COMPANY NAME]
   - Company number: [COMPANY NUMBER]
   - Accounting period end: [DATE]
   - Company type and size, if known: [DETAILS]
   - Applicable accounting framework, if known: [DETAILS]
   
   I will provide source records such as the trial balance, general ledger, bank reconciliation, fixed-asset register, payroll summary, loan statements, director transactions, dividends, stock records and prior-year accounts. Use only the supplied records. Keep an audit trail showing which source supports every figure.
   
   Produce:
   1. A structured draft profit and loss account and balance sheet using the supplied figures.
   2. A list of proposed notes and disclosures, with each uncertain or missing item clearly marked.
   3. A reconciliation of opening balances to the prior-year accounts where those accounts are supplied.
   4. A list of inconsistencies, missing records, unusual transactions and accounting judgements that require an accountant.
   5. A Companies House filing checklist based only on the current official UK guidance I provide or attach. If the guidance is missing or unclear, say so rather than relying on memory.
   6. A plain statement that the draft must be checked and approved by the directors and, where needed, a qualified accountant before submission.
   
   Do not calculate corporation tax, recommend reliefs, or give legal or accounting advice. Do not fill gaps with estimates. Label every figure as supplied, calculated from supplied figures, or missing.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.