A FTSE250 Company Scretary writes...
We are a FTSE 250 company and currently using CoAct online for electronic filings to Companies House. We wanted to start using the software to its full potential and wondered how other companies were making use of the software to make working practices more efficient? Does anyone have any advice / tips / hints please?
We were told by ICSA that our previous software Blueprint (desktop version) would not support the ability to generate PSC registers and we were therefore encouraged to move to CoAct, which we were told would be in a similar format to Blueprint. My advice would be to stick with Blueprint if at all possible. CoAct, has a lot more functionality if one can work out how to use it, but is more complicated and no way near as easy to use as Blueprint. There are 2 menus on the screen, one horizontal and one vertical (both exactly the same). Everytime I talk to the helpline they tell me to ignore the horizontal menu so I’m not sure why it is there. The process for initially generating PSC registers is also far from intuitive. We generally use it for:
• Filing directorship appointments and resignations etc electronically with Companies House, the forms for which are all pre-populated.
• Maintaining a record of directors and secretaries as well as share capital, enabling us to print out registers of directors and members when applicable
• Producing template minutes and resolutions for various transactions, which can be saved as pending events, including for example company dissolutions
• Keeping our own records up to date with regards to when Annual Returns and accounts are filed
• Maintaining a register of directors’ interests
• You can also keep copies of the company articles within the individual company folders along with other constitutional documents and for example lease documents
• I believe there is also a share plan function, though having had a play with the Blueprint share plans tab, the functionality and options available are very limited in comparison to a proper software provider
• If you obtain the viso add on I believe you can also generate group structure charts.
I would definitely recommend some training if you wish to make full use of CoAct.
Sorry, don’t use CoAct