Your first anniversary: filings, tax, governance, the numbers and the plan for year two.
A year in, the risks shift from setting up to staying compliant and keeping momentum. Use this list around your first anniversary, then repeat it every year.
With SkilledUp Life: Use SkilledUp Lifers to keep compliant in year one and to resource your year two plan. How it helps ↓
Check the registered office, directors, shareholders, PSCs and SIC codes are correct.
Start early. First accounts are usually due 21 months after incorporation, but your Corporation Tax return depends on them too.
Due 12 months after the end of the accounting period; payment is usually due earlier, nine months and one day after it.
New shares issued must be reported to Companies House within one month (form SH01).
If you spent money resolving genuine scientific or technological uncertainty, you may be able to claim. Routine software development does not qualify.
So your investors receive the certificates they need to claim their tax relief.
EMI grants must be notified to HMRC by the deadline after the end of the tax year in which they were granted.
Even with two directors. Record key decisions, especially share issues and option grants.
They should match exactly, including options granted and convertibles outstanding.
Renew insurance, check your privacy policy and cookie consent still match what you do, and renew the ICO fee.
If you are not registered, check taxable turnover for the past 12 months every month.
Revenue (MRR if you are SaaS), churn, gross margin, burn and runway, every month.
What does a customer cost to win, and how long until they pay it back?
Monthly or quarterly. Good updates make the next raise easier.
What do your best customers have in common? Update your ideal customer profile.
Most tech startups underprice in year one.
Profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet, monthly for the next year.
Raise only when it pays: when the money buys growth you cannot reach from revenue.
Your ticks are saved in this browser only. This checklist is general information for UK private limited companies, not legal, tax or accounting advice; rules, fees and thresholds change, so check GOV.UK and take professional advice.
There is no SkilledUp Life plan built around your first anniversary, but this is exactly the moment skilled volunteers make the biggest difference: the admin grows, the plan gets bigger, and cash is still precious.
Volunteers with finance and legal backgrounds help you prepare year-end information for your accountant, gather evidence for an R&D tax relief claim and keep your registers and cap table in order.
Volunteers build and maintain your metrics dashboard and help you prepare a monthly investor update.
A product team of up to 25 SkilledUp Lifers adds design, development and testing capacity as you act on what customers told you in year one.
A marketing, sales and customer success team of up to 100 SkilledUp Lifers runs research, content, outreach and onboarding, led by your core team.
Growing with volunteers alongside a small paid core team keeps your burn low, extends your runway and lets you raise later, on better terms, if you raise at all.
SkilledUp Life is exclusively for tech companies. Volunteers cannot be paid in any form, including stipends, gift vouchers or expenses. All volunteering is remote, and no promises of paid roles can be made.
Grow with SkilledUp Life →Join tech founders who put execution before investment.