Introducing Practices: A Multi-Client Workspace and Monthly Billing for UK Accountants

Filing HQ was built for founders filing for one company. That worked well — until accountants and company secretaries started using it for ten, fifty, two hundred companies at a time. The platform held up, but the experience didn't: every junior staff member needed their own card on file to submit a confirmation statement, every filing kicked back its own Stripe receipt, and there was no clean way to give a colleague exactly enough access to do their job and nothing more.

Practices is our answer. It is a new workspace tier on Filing HQ designed for firms — accountants, company secretaries, formation agents, and consultants — who manage multiple client companies and need real role-based access, a unified Companies House presenter ID, and a single monthly bill instead of dozens of per-filing receipts. This post explains what Practices is, who it's for, and exactly how the new monthly billing works.

What is a Practice?

A practice is a shared workspace that sits above individual companies. Where a personal account holds your own companies, a practice holds your firm's client companies — every company you manage on behalf of someone else — and shares them across your team according to the role each member holds. From a member's point of view, they pick the practice from the "Working in" dropdown at the top of the sidebar and the entire app re-scopes around it: clients, filings, members, billing, all the practice's own data.

Practices solve four problems that single-user Filing HQ never could:

• Multi-client visibility — every member of the practice sees the same client list, the same filing pipeline, the same compliance calendar. No more emailing screenshots to a colleague.
• Role-based access (RBAC) — three system roles (Owner, Manager, Staff) plus unlimited custom roles, each with granular permissions covering specific filing types, billing access, member management, and more.
• Presenter delegation — file every Companies House submission under your firm's own GovTalk presenter ID. The CH-side audit trail and any filing fees go to your CH account, not Filing HQ's.
• Centralised billing — one Stripe invoice per month for every filing your team submits. Junior staff never see a card prompt; the firm pays.

Who Practices is for

If you fit any of these descriptions, Practices is built for you:

• Accountants and chartered firms filing confirmation statements, officer changes, and PSC notifications on behalf of clients
• Company secretarial agents running registered office services and statutory compliance for portfolios of clients
• Formation agents incorporating new companies and handing them off to founders
• Consultants and bookkeepers who occasionally file on behalf of one or two clients but want a cleaner separation between personal and client workspaces

Individual founders filing only for their own companies don't need Practices — your existing personal workspace and pay-as-you-go pricing continue unchanged. Practices is purely additive.

Roles and permissions: who in your team can do what

When you invite a team member to a practice, you assign them a role. Filing HQ ships with three system roles out of the box:

• Owner — every permission, including billing setup, member management, and practice deletion. Each practice has at least one Owner.
• Manager — every permission except deleting the practice and managing custom roles. Day-to-day operational lead.
• Staff — read-only access to clients, members, roles, and filings. Useful for trainees and onboarding.

For anything more nuanced, you can create custom roles with exactly the granular permissions you want. Practices ship with permissions covering every meaningful action — incorporate a company, add an existing company, appoint a director, file a confirmation statement, change the registered office, manage share certificates, view receipts, run identity verification, change the company authentication code, and more. A custom role called "Junior — appointments only" with just filings.appoint_director and filings.appoint_psc takes about 30 seconds to define.

Permissions are enforced both server-side (every controller action checks the relevant policy method) and in the UI (buttons and sidebar entries hide for users who can't use them). A Staff member without filings.issue_shares simply doesn't see the "Issue new shares" CTA on a client company — they don't get a 403 page mid-flow.

Companies House presenter delegation

If your firm has its own GovTalk presenter ID with Companies House — most established accountants do — you can route every submission for the practice's clients under that presenter. Switch it on once in your practice settings (Presenter ID, authentication code, package reference) and from that moment every filing your team makes goes out under your firm's name on the CH audit trail.

Two practical effects worth knowing about:

• CH-side filing fees go to your CH account — the £34 confirmation statement fee, the £20 change of name fee, the £33 dissolution fee. Companies House debits them directly from your presenter credit, not Filing HQ.
• Filing HQ discounts the fee component — when delegation is on, Filing HQ charges a "delegated presenter" price for those filings that excludes the CH fee, so you're not paying twice. Filings with no CH fee (officer changes, PSC events) cost the same as before.

With delegation enabled, Filing HQ's price for each fee-bearing filing is:

Every other filing — director and PSC events, share allotments, stock transfers, registered-office changes, identity verification — is £0 at Companies House already, so there's no fee to deduct and the price is identical with or without delegation.

Submissions made under your presenter ID are legally your firm's filings. If you don't have a presenter ID, leave delegation off — Filing HQ continues to file under its own presenter and the prices stay the same.

How practice billing works

This is the part most firms ask about first, so we'll be specific. Practice billing replaces the per-filing Stripe Checkout flow with a credit-account model: your firm has a Stripe customer record, every filing your team submits accrues as an invoice item against that customer, and Stripe issues a single consolidated invoice at the end of each month.

The credit account: £500/month to start

Every new practice starts with a £500 monthly credit account. This is the amount of filing charges your firm can accrue in a calendar month before submissions are paused. The limit applies to accruing items only — once the monthly invoice is issued, those items move from "pending" to "invoiced" and the next month starts fresh with the full £500 available again.

£500 covers a typical month for most small firms. A confirmation statement under delegated presenter is £15, a change of name is £30, and a voluntary strike off (DS01) is £50 — so even a busy month with a dozen confirmation statements and a couple of name changes (£180 + £60) leaves plenty of room. If your firm files more than that, just message us — we raise practice credit limits in seconds based on your usage history. There is no automated upgrade dance.

Setup: five fields, no card required

From the new Billing tab in your practice sidebar (visible to anyone with the billing.view permission), the practice Owner runs a one-page setup wizard:

• Billing email — where Stripe will send invoices and reminders. Usually your firm's accounts inbox.
• Billing name — what appears on the invoice. Defaults to the practice name.
• VAT number — optional, but if you're VAT-registered enter it here so it appears on every invoice.

Submit the form and we create the Stripe customer, persist your billing details, and switch your practice into invoice-account mode. No card details required at setup. Your team can start submitting filings immediately — the firm pays each invoice through the link Stripe emails on the issue date.

Per-filing experience: no Checkout, no card, no friction

Once billing is set up, this is what a Staff member sees when they submit a filing on a practice-attached company:

1. Click Submit on a draft confirmation statement, director appointment, share allotment — anything chargeable.
2. The filing is added to the practice's account. No Stripe Checkout. No card prompt. No redirect.
3. The submission goes to Companies House through the existing pipeline.
4. The user lands on the filings index with a flash message: "Filing submitted; added to your firm's account."

That's it. The Junior Staff member doesn't need a personal card on file. The firm Owner doesn't need to be in the room. The filing reaches Companies House at the same speed as any individual user's filing — typically under 30 seconds for officer changes and PSC events, a couple of minutes for confirmation statements.

The monthly invoice: NET 7, automatic, emailed

On the last day of every month, Filing HQ runs a scheduled job that issues a Stripe invoice for every practice with pending items. Stripe then:

• Pulls every pending invoice item into a single consolidated invoice
• Auto-finalises the invoice and attaches a hosted payment URL
• Emails it to your billing address with a one-click pay link
• Sets the due date 7 days out (NET 7)
• Runs its standard dunning lifecycle if the invoice goes unpaid (configurable reminders before terminal failure)

You see every past invoice in your practice's Billing tab with a status pill (Paid / Open / Uncollectible), the issue date, the due date, the total, and a link to the Stripe-hosted PDF. No separate accounting export needed — the Stripe invoice is the artifact your bookkeeper wants.

What happens if a filing fails after submission

Companies House occasionally rejects filings — duplicate submissions, invalid data, validation errors. When this happens on a practice-billed filing, we automatically void the invoice item both locally and on Stripe. Your firm is not charged for filings that never made it to the register. The draft is preserved so you can correct and resubmit.

What happens if an invoice is unpaid

Stripe runs its standard dunning sequence — typically multiple email reminders over about three weeks, escalating to terminal failure if no payment is received. Critically: we do not auto-suspend practices for unpaid invoices. Your team continues to file through arrears unless an admin manually intervenes. Past unpaid invoices are visible in the Billing tab so you know where you stand, but they don't block submissions.

This is deliberate. Accountants run on monthly cycles, and a single late invoice should not lock a firm out of filing during the busiest week of the month. If a practice goes seriously into arrears we contact the Owner directly before any manual suspension — never as an automated cut-off.

A worked example

Smith & Co Accountants set up a practice on Filing HQ and attach 15 client companies. Their own GovTalk presenter ID is configured, so delegation is on. They invite three colleagues: Sarah (Owner), Raj (Manager), and Priya (Staff with a custom role granting filings.confirmation_statement and filings.appoint_director only).

Through April, the team submits:

• 12 confirmation statements at £15 each (delegated) — £180. Companies House debits 12 × £34 from Smith & Co's CH presenter account directly.
• 1 change of company name at £30 (delegated) — £30. CH debits £20 from the presenter account.
• 1 voluntary strike off (DS01) at £50 (delegated) — £50. CH debits £33 from the presenter account.
• A handful of director appointments, PSC notifications, and registered-office changes on practice-attached companies — none of these carry a CH fee, so Filing HQ's standard prices apply identically with or without delegation.

At any point during April, Sarah can open the Billing tab and see the running total — for example "£260 of £500 used this month — next invoice 30 April." Priya never sees any of this; her view shows only the draft filings she's permitted to work on. Raj has the same usage view as Sarah but can't edit billing details.

At 23:30 on 30 April, the cron fires. Stripe issues a single consolidated invoice for the month's accrued total, marks every line item as "invoiced", and emails the invoice PDF and payment link to Smith & Co's billing address. Due date: 7 May. Sarah pays it through the Stripe-hosted link in two clicks. May begins with the credit account reset to the full £500.

Worth noting: the £34 × 12 in CH-side confirmation statement fees, plus £20 for the name change and £33 for the dissolution, were never on Smith & Co's Filing HQ invoice. CH took those directly from the firm's presenter account — exactly what delegation is for.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a setup fee or monthly subscription for Practices?

No. Creating a practice is free, inviting team members is free, attaching client companies is free, and there is no recurring subscription. You pay only for filings your team actually submits — exactly the same per-filing prices as the personal workspace, with the delegated-presenter discount applied automatically when delegation is on.

Can I have more than one practice on the same account?

Yes. Some users belong to several practices — a primary firm plus advisory work for a smaller firm, for example. The "Working in" dropdown lets you switch scope between Personal, Practice A, Practice B, and into individual companies within each scope. Each practice has its own billing, its own roles, its own client list, and its own audit trail.

What happens to client companies if I delete a practice?

Companies attached to a practice revert to their original owner when the practice is deleted. They are not deleted themselves. Pending invoice items still flow into the next monthly invoice cycle so the practice's final bill is settled cleanly.

Can I move a client company between practices?

Yes. Detach the company from its current practice (returns it to its original owner), then re-attach it to the destination practice. We're working on a direct transfer flow that skips the round-trip; for now the two-step is straightforward.

Does the £500 monthly limit roll over?

No. The credit limit is a per-month accrual cap, not a balance. Unused credit doesn't carry forward; the limit resets each month when the invoice is issued. If you regularly use less than £500, that's just lower invoices — nothing accumulates. If you regularly need more, message us to raise the limit permanently.

Can junior staff see the firm's invoices?

Only if they have the billing.view permission, which Owner roles have by default and Manager roles have by default. Staff and most custom roles don't, so juniors can submit filings and see their own work without seeing what the firm is paying. The Owner can grant billing.view to any custom role if you want a particular team member to monitor spend.

What if I need to close my practice mid-month?

Pending invoice items still flow into the final invoice on the next monthly cycle. There's no early-termination charge or proration penalty — you pay exactly for what your team submitted while the practice was active.

Is Filing HQ a Companies House Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP)?

Yes. Filing HQ is a registered ACSP and can verify directors' and PSCs' identities under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act (ECCTA). Practices using identity verification through Filing HQ get the verification record stored on each officer's profile and surfaced in the company's compliance view. See our guide to Companies House identity verification for the underlying mechanics.

What's still on the roadmap

Practices is shipping with the core feature set we believe firms need to move their day-to-day filing work onto Filing HQ. A few enhancements are on the immediate roadmap:

• Saved-card auto-charge mode — for firms that prefer to settle each invoice immediately on issue rather than via the NET 7 pay link
• Per-client billing breakdown on invoices — so your bookkeeper can recharge the right client cost centres
• Approaching-limit email notifications — automatic warning when you cross 80% of your monthly credit
• Direct client transfer between practices — one-click move instead of detach-then-attach
• Address services and mail forwarding billed through the practice account — currently still per-user

If you're an early adopter and have specific feature requests, our team reads every reply. Book a 20-minute call and we'll walk you through the workflow that fits your firm.

Get your firm set up in five minutes

Practices is live for every Filing HQ account today. If you're already using the platform, the "Working in" dropdown now includes a "Create practice" entry. If you're new, sign up first and you'll find Practices in the same place. There's no waitlist, no demo gate, no contract minimums.

We built Practices because we use Filing HQ ourselves — to manage registered office services, file confirmation statements, and run identity verification for our own clients. Every problem Practices solves is one we've personally hit. We expect you'll find rough edges; please tell us about them.