Your filing deadlines
Two deadlines apply to almost every UK company, and both are published. Missing one is visible to anybody who looks, it carries an automatic penalty, and it costs far more in a sale than the penalty itself.
The annual accounts
Accounts are due nine months after the end of the accounting period, for a company that is not filing its first set. The register publishes the due date and marks the filing overdue the day after it passes.
The penalty is automatic and it escalates with time. It doubles if accounts are filed late two years running. Nobody has to decide to charge it.
The confirmation statement
The confirmation statement is a yearly check that the registrar holds the right details, meaning the officers, the people with significant control, the registered office and the share capital. It is due once every twelve months.
It is not a set of accounts and it is quick to file, which is what makes an overdue one look worse than it is. A buyer reads a late confirmation statement as evidence that nobody is minding the administration.
What a missed deadline actually costs
The penalty is the smallest part. An overdue filing is the first thing on the public file, so it is the first thing a buyer, a lender or a supplier sees.
Persistent failure to file can lead the registrar to begin striking the company off, and it can leave directors personally exposed. A company being struck off cannot be sold.
How snapdue shows them
The company page leads with the verdict rather than the dates. It says filed, due soon, or overdue, with a sentence saying how late something is, and the dates from the register sit underneath it.
The dashboard can be sorted by the next statutory deadline, so a portfolio of companies orders itself by what needs attention first.