Creating your company profile

Why it matters

• A complete company profile keeps your cap table accurate and legally meaningful — the right registration number, currency, and incorporation date matter when you start issuing shares or filing with Companies House.

• Adding the right users with the right permission levels means your team can do their jobs in Shareflo without seeing things they shouldn't.

• Confirming your directors and persons with significant control (PSCs) from the start means your governance records are in order when you need them.

• Reviewing your share classes and option schemes before you start recording holdings saves you from fixing mismatches later.

Step 1 — Create your company profile

When you first sign up and log into Shareflo, you'll be prompted to set up your company. The first thing you'll see is a search box asking you to find your company on Companies House.

We strongly recommend using this. Searching for your company by name or registration number lets Shareflo auto-populate your company details and kick off an automatic import of your share classes, directors, and PSCs from your Companies House filings — saving significant manual work.

Using the Companies House search (recommended)

1. Type your company name or registration number into the search box.

2. Select your company from the results.

3. Shareflo pre-fills your company details

4. Review the pre-filled details, make any corrections needed and fill any gaps (e.g. your company domain address) and click Continue

Setting up manually

If your company isn't registered at Companies House yet, or you'd prefer to enter your details manually, select Enter details manually and fill in the fields below:

• Company name — your company's registered name.

• Companies House registration number — leave this blank if you don’t have one.

• Domain address — optional, but useful for your company record, and allows us to automatically import your logo.

• Registered address — your company's registered office address.

• Incorporation date — the date your company was incorporated.

• Country — the country of incorporation.

• Default currency — the currency used for your cap table (e.g. GBP).

Shareflo creates your company record and you are automatically set up as an Admin user for the company. If you provided a Companies House registration number, Shareflo will also begin importing your share classes and shareholders.

Step 2 — Add company users

The next step is to invite any colleagues from your team who also need access to your cap table - for example your CFO, lawyer or HR manager. You can do this now or come back to it later (via the Settings manu).

To add a colleague as a company user

1. Click Invite user.

2. Fill in the following fields:

3. Click Save. The new user will receive an invitation email with a link to set up their login.

To change a user's permission or deactivate them

Old users are never deleted, they are deactivated. Find the user in the Users tab and use the edit controls next to their name. Deactivating a user removes their access immediately — their historical actions are preserved.

Step 3 — Review your directors, secretaries, and PSCs

Shareflo stores your company's directors, secretaries, and persons with significant control (PSCs) in Settings → Board & Officers.

If you used the Companies House search

Your directors, secretaries, and PSCs will have been pulled in automatically when you set up your company. As part of your Company setup process you should make sure that these have been imported correctly. You can also do this later via Settings → Board & Officers.

1. Check that all current directors and PSCs are listed with the correct names and details.

2. If anyone is missing or a record needs correcting, use the edit controls on that page to make changes.

3. If someone needs to be added, click Add officer or Add PSC and fill in their details.

If you set up manually

You will need to add your directors, secretaries, and PSCs by hand:

1. Click Add new officer

2. Enter the person's name, email address, and (where applicable) their Companies House personal code.

3. Repeat for each director, secretary, and PSC.

The Investor Director flag

For each director, you can mark them as an Investor Director. Use this to record that a director was appointed as a condition of an investor's participation — for example, where the investor holds board appointment rights under a shareholders' agreement. This is for your records only and helps you track your governance obligations.

Director Personal codes

New changes came into effect in late 2025 whereby company directors now need to complete an ID verification process as part of their company’s filings with Companies House. In particular, the company must supply each director’s Personal Code in order to submit their annual Confirmation statement. You can save your directors’ personal codes in this section. The personal codes are sensitive information so they are only visible to users with Admin or Manager permission. See our related article on Companies House ID verification for more information (link below).

Step 4 — Subscription

By default, your account will be created on the free subscription plan. Your subscription determines which Shareflo features and seat limits are available to your company, and you can use this screen to upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also do this later via Settings → Subscription.

For a full explanation of plans, billing, and how to upgrade or downgrade, see the related article: Managing Your Subscription (link at the bottom).

Step 5 — Confirm your share classes and option schemes

The final stage of setup is reviewing your share classes and option schemes (referred to in Shareflo as instruments).

If you used the Companies House search

By the time you reach this screen, Shareflo will have automatically created your share classes from your Companies House filings. Review what has been imported:

1. Check each share class — confirm the name, nominal value, and voting rights are correct.

2. Edit anything that needs adjusting by clicking into the record.

3. Add any share classes hat were missed using the Add instrument button, and remove anything that shouldn't be there

4. Since Option schemes are not reported to Companies House, they need to be added manually

You can also do this later via Manage Equity → Instruments.

If you set up manually

You'll arrive at an empty screen and will need to add your share classes and option schemes by hand before you can start recording who holds what.

1. Click Add instrument.

2. Choose whether you're adding a share class (e.g. Ordinary shares) or an option scheme (e.g. EMI options).

3. Fill in the required details — including name, nominal value, and (for options) exercise price and vesting terms.

4. Repeat for each share class or scheme your company has.

Once all your instruments are in place, click Continue.

For more on creating and editing share classes and option schemes after setup, see the related article: Creating and Editing Instruments (link at the end).

What happens after setup

Once you have completed all the steps above, you're ready to start using your cap table:

• Your company profile is saved and can be updated at any time from Settings → Company Profile.

• Invited team members will receive emails and can log in with their own credentials.

• Your share classes and option schemes are ready to use when you start recording holdings — who owns what, and under what terms.

• Your directors and PSCs are on record for governance tracking.

The logical next step is to add your stakeholders — the founders, investors, employees, and other parties who hold equity. See Adding Stakeholders and Representatives to get started.

If you provided a companies house registration number during registration, then Shareflo will automatically add an shareholders who appear in Companies House filings. However, this process is imperfect because not all filings can be parsed, and because option holders are never reported to Companies House.

Troubleshooting

My share classes didn't import automatically.

The automatic import reads your Companies House filing history, specifically your share capital returns. If your company is newly incorporated, or hasn't yet filed any share capital documents with Companies House, the import may return nothing. Sometimes the import can also fail because the pdf filings in Companies House could not be parsed properly. In that case, add your share classes manually using the Add instrument button on the Instrument Review page of the onboarding flow, or from Instruments & Pools once you're in your cap table.

The wrong directors or PSCs were imported.

The import reads the current state of your Companies House record at the point of setup. If your Companies House record isn't fully up to date, you may see incorrect or outdated entries. You can add, edit, or remove records manually from Settings → Board & Officers at any time. In this case you should check that your Companies House record is up to date and correct it too. Keeping your Companies House record up to date is important.

A user hasn't received their invitation email.

Ask them to check their spam or junk folder first. If it's not there, go to the Users tab in Settings, find the user, and use Resend invite. If the problem continues, contact us at support@shareflo.co.uk.