Using the Companies House Wizard

Why it matters

• It can save hours of manual entry by pre-filling share events (like allotments, transfers, conversions, cancellations, and share splits) from your Companies House filings.

• It helps you build a cap table that matches your legal history and can be cross-checked against your latest Confirmation Statement.

• It makes it easier to spot gaps or inconsistencies early — before you start issuing new shares or preparing reports.

Before you start

• Who can run the Wizard: Company users with the right admin/manager permissions. It is run as part of the Company onboarding process, and once it has been run it disappears from the menu.

• What you’ll need: Your company must be linked to Companies House in Shareflo (i.e. your Companies House registration number is set correctly in Company Settings).

• What the Wizard can and can’t do: The Wizard can import and suggest cap table events from Companies House filings, but you are responsible for reviewing and confirming the results.

How the Wizard works

The Wizard has four stages:

1. Import and analyse filings

2. You review and edit shareholders and filings

3. Validation checks

4. Create your cap table

What is automatically filled by AI (LLM) vs. Companies House data

Some information comes directly from Companies House, and some is inferred from the PDF filings by an AI model (LLM). This affects reliability and time to run:

From Companies House (fast, more reliable):

• The company’s filing list (filing history)

• Most filing dates and filing types

From AI reading the filing PDFs (slower, needs review):

• Share class names used in a filing

• Quantities (including share allotment counts, share split quantities and ratios)

• Price/currency for allotments and transfers

• Event dates (sometimes the event date differs from the filing date)

• Whether one filing represents more than one event (e.g. multiple share classes)

Because the AI is interpreting documents, you should expect occasional gaps or mistakes — and you should always review the “selected” values before creating your cap table.

Step-by-step: Using the Companies House Wizard

Step 1 — Launch the Wizard

You will normally do this as part of your onboarding. But if you skip for any reason you can find it by:

1. Go to your company page in Shareflo.

2. Open Settings (Company Settings section).

3. Click Run Wizard (or Companies House Wizard).

When you launch the Wizard, Shareflo re-downloads your recent filings and starts analysing any filings that haven’t been processed yet.

How long does it take?

• If you have only a small number of relevant filings, it may take a minute or two.

• If you have many filings (or large PDFs), it can take longer — the AI analysis runs in the background and processes filings in batches.

• You can usually start reviewing shareholders while other filings finish processing.

Step 2 — Review individual shareholders

The first tab shows suggested individual shareholder found in your filings.

To keep an individual shareholder

1. Review the name and details.

2. Add any missing information you know (for example email address or joining date).

3. Click Save Individual Shareholders.

It is a good idea to at least include the shareholder’s email address, since this will allow us to set up their investor account. We won’t invite them until you are ready to do so, so there is no reason to delay doing this.

It’s also a good idea to include the National Insurance number for employee shareholders since you will need those for your HMRC filings down the road.

To ignore an incorrect shareholder

1. Find the shareholder in the list.

2. Choose Remove using the menu

Ignored shareholders will not be created in Shareflo.

If a person was detected as the wrong type (individual vs institutional)

Use the menu on the shareholder row to Switch to entity (or Switch to individual) and then complete the correct fields before saving.

If you need to undo changes you made to a shareholder

Use the menu on the shareholder row to Undo all changes

Step 3 — Review institutional shareholders

The second tab shows suggested company/entity shareholders (e.g. Venture capital investors, Strategic investors, or just individuals who chose to invest via a limited company)

To keep an entity shareholder

1. Review the company name.

2. If they are a UK-based company, use the Companies House lookup icon to pull in the registration number and registered address.

3. Click Save Entity Shareholders.

To ignore an entity shareholder

Use Ignore (or remove from the menu), then continue.

Step 4 — Review your filing history (this is the main step)

The Filing History tab shows the events Shareflo believes are relevant to your cap table, in chronological order.

For each row, review the pre-populated fields and complete any gaps:

• Event type (e.g. share allotment, share transfer, share class conversion, share cancellation, share split)

• Event date

• Share class / instrument

• Quantity

• Price & currency (where relevant)

• Shareholder(s)

• Tax scheme (to indicate where you are issuing SEIS/EIS shares)

You can click the PDF icon to open the underlying filing document while you review.

Adding a second shareholder to a filing

Some filings (especially allotments) may cover more than one shareholder, but the filing only shows a single total.

To split one filing across multiple shareholders:

1. Open the menu (⋮) on the filing row.

2. Click Add a shareholder.

3. A new row is created for the additional shareholder.

4. Enter the shareholder and the quantity for each row.

Important: The individual shareholder rows must add up to the total quantity shown for the filing.

Adding a missing shareholder

The wizard is only able to import the shareholders whose names are visible from companies house filings. So, any shareholders who were awarded shares after your last Annual Return filing won’t be created automatically. And of course the AI can make mistakes and miss out a shareholder. In either case, you can manually add the shareholder using the + button at the top of the shareholder column.

Adding a missing event (when a transaction has no Companies House filing)

Some events (for example certain share transfers) may not appear in Companies House filings.

To add one manually:

1. Open the menu (⋮) on any row near the right date.

2. Click Add a missing event.

3. Fill in the event details just like a normal row.

Undoing changes or re-importing a row

If a row has gone wrong, you have a few safe recovery options from the menu (⋮):

• Undo all changes — resets the row back to the imported values.

• Reimport row — re-runs the AI import for that filing (this can take ~60 seconds).

• Remove — excludes the row from cap table creation (useful when a filing was submitted to CHS and you subsequently submitted a correction)

Changing the order of rows

Rows are primarily ordered by event date. If you edit a date, the row will move automatically.

If you have two events on the same date and need to control ordering:

• Use Move row up / Move row down from the menu (⋮).

Checking totals against your Confirmation Statement

For annual filings (e.g. Confirmation Statement), you may see an option like Verify totals.

This compares:

• The totals in the annual filing, vs.

• The sum of the events that occurred earlier in the list

If the totals don’t match, it doesn’t always mean Shareflo is wrong — Companies House filings can contain corrections or inconsistencies — but it’s a strong signal to double-check the earlier events.

Step 5 — Run validation checks

When you’re happy with shareholders and filings, click Run Validation Checks.

Validation helps you catch common issues, such as:

• Missing event type or event date

• Missing shareholder (or invalid “from/to” shareholders on transfers)

• Missing share class / instrument

• Missing quantity (or invalid quantity)

• Missing tax scheme (where required)

• Missing price/currency (where required)

• Share split ratios that don’t make sense

• A reduction event (transfer/conversion/cancellation) that tries to reduce more shares than a shareholder had at that point in time

If validation finds issues, fix the highlighted rows and run validation again.

Step 6 — Create your cap table

Once validation passes, you can create the cap table events.

When you click Create cap table (or the final confirmation button):

• Shareflo creates the cap table events in chronological order.

• Rows you ignored or removed are not included.

Depending on the number of events and whether share splits are involved, this step can take a few moments.

What happens after

After the cap table is created:

• You’ll be able to view and manage holdings and events in your cap table normally.

• If you later find a mistake, you can correct your cap table using normal Shareflo event tools (or contact support if you’re unsure what to change).

Troubleshooting / FAQs

I can’t see the Companies House Wizard.

This will normally happen because the wizard has already been run for your company. Once shareholders and events have been created in Shareflo there is no need for the wizard.

The Wizard is taking a long time to load or “processing” never finishes.

AI analysis can take longer when there are many filings or large PDFs. Leave the Wizard open for a few minutes and refresh once. If it still doesn’t progress, contact support with your company name and (if possible) the date range of filings you’re trying to import.

Will I lose my work if I close the wizard or if I refresh the browser?

No. All changes you make in the Wizard are saved as you go along. So long as you’ve not completed Step 6 (see above), you can always navigate back to the wizard and pick up where you left off.

A filing is missing from the list.

Not all Companies House filings are relevant to cap tables, and some filings may not be parseable. If you believe a cap table-relevant event is missing, use Add a missing event.

The share class name looks wrong.

Share class names are often inferred from the PDF wording. Open the PDF, and check the share class name.

• If the correct share class exists in the dropdown menu then just correct it.

• If the syntax of the share class is incorrect, you can always edit this later on (after you finish the wizard).

• If the there is a share class missing completely then just ignore the events affecting that class and add them manually later on

Validation says a shareholder doesn’t have enough shares for a transfer/conversion/cancellation.

This usually means one of the earlier events is missing, out of order, or has the wrong quantity/shareholder. Check earlier rows (especially share splits and allotments), correct them, then run validation again. Also, be sure to check whether this shareholder actually acquired their shares via a share transfer. Share transfers don’t get reported in Companies House. So you will need to create the missing share transfer manually (use the Add missing Event action).

The PDF won’t open.

Some Companies House documents are unavailable or blocked. If the PDF isn’t accessible, you can still complete the event manually using your own records (and add a missing event if needed).

I’m not sure what to enter for price/currency.

If the filing does not disclose price/currency, use your legal/finance records (or ask your lawyer/accountant). If it was a share transfer, then you should know the price from the transfer documents.

I’m not sure what to enter for or tax scheme

Do you issue SEIS or EIS shares? If not, then leave the Tax scheme as None.

How can I add options to my cap table?

The Wizard does not support option creation, since option grants do not get reported to Companies House. Instead you can add option grants manually after the wizard has finished.

If you have already had some options be exercised and convert into shares, then you have two options. You can either skip recording the option grant completely and simply record the exercise event as if it were a new allotment.

Alternatively, if you do want your cap table to record the option grant and its exercise, then you can exclude the SH01 filings which represent option exercise events (use the Remove menu action), and then manually create the option grant and option exercise event after the Wizard has finished. If you need help importing a complex cap table, contact support@shareflo.co.uk