Services · Company formation to succession
Corporate services for growing UK companies
Crownfield Limited provides the corporate, accounting, and advisory services that UK limited companies need to stay compliant and make better decisions.
Talk through your scope with CrownfieldWhat each service area covers
This page gives an overview of each service area so you can see what is available and identify what your business actually needs. Detailed pages cover formation, accounting and tax, payroll, and advisory work separately.
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Company formation and secretarial
Incorporating with Companies House is the starting point, but the structure you choose affects everything after: share classes, directors, people with significant control, and the registered office address. We handle the incorporation, prepare the statutory documents, and manage ongoing company secretarial work, including confirmation statements and register updates when directors or shareholdings change.
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Accounting and statutory reporting
Annual accounts are a legal requirement for every UK limited company, filed with Companies House and used as the basis for the Corporation Tax return. We prepare them from your records, and we keep the underlying bookkeeping current through the year so the year-end is not a reconstruction exercise. Where a business needs more frequent visibility, we prepare management accounts monthly or quarterly.
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Tax planning and Corporation Tax
Tax planning works best before decisions are made, not after. We look at the shape of the business, how directors are remunerated, when capital expenditure is timed, and how profits are extracted. For owner-managed companies that usually means coordinating corporate and personal tax positions rather than treating them separately.
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Payroll and people operations
If you employ staff, you are running PAYE. We process payroll end to end: gross to net calculations, deductions, statutory payments, pensions where applicable, and the Real Time Information submissions that report each pay run to HMRC. We also handle starters, leavers, and the year-end payroll submissions that follow the tax year.
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Outsourced finance function
Some businesses do not want an in-house finance team but still need one. An outsourced arrangement covers bookkeeping, management reporting, and often payroll and compliance support, with oversight from someone senior enough to interpret the numbers. It is usually more flexible than hiring, and it scales up or down as the business changes.
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Business advisory and succession
Advisory work covers growth planning, funding preparation, restructuring, and ownership transition. Succession is a recurring theme: transferring a business to family, to management, or through an Employee Ownership Trust all involve valuation, tax, and governance questions that take time to work through. Starting the conversation early keeps more options open.
Reporting you can act on
A balance sheet and profit and loss account are only useful if you can read them quickly and spot what has changed. We structure management reporting so a director can see revenue, margin, cash position, and commitments without an accounting background. Cash flow forecasting in particular tends to change how founders make hiring and purchasing decisions.
Management accounts, prepared from live records
Monthly or quarterly reporting built on bookkeeping kept current through the year, so figures arrive ready to read rather than reconstructed at the deadline.
Statutory records kept in order all year
Confirmation statements, register updates, and Companies House filings handled as they fall due, not gathered up in a rush.
Choosing the right scope
Not every business needs every service. A single-director consultancy may only need formation and an annual accounts preparation. An employer with ten staff likely needs payroll, bookkeeping, and management accounts. We will tell you which category you fall into after a short conversation, and we will not pad the scope to increase the fee.
Bring what you already have: last filed accounts, a recent bank statement, and a note of who is paid through the company. That is usually enough for us to sketch the right combination of services in one sitting, and to say plainly where you do not need help.
How to tell which services you need
Two questions settle most of it. First, does anyone receive a salary or a wage through the company? If yes, payroll and the pension duties that follow it are in scope. Second, does the company hold stock, invoice customers, or carry more than a handful of transactions a month? If yes, bookkeeping and management accounts will save time and money later.
Everything else follows from the shape of the business and the plans behind it. If a sale, a new shareholder, or a family handover is anywhere on the horizon, advisory work belongs on the list now, because the tax and governance choices made in the year before a change matter more than the change itself.
Sole director, no staff
Formation and secretarial work, annual accounts, and a Corporation Tax return prepared together.
Employer with staff
Payroll end to end, bookkeeping through the year, management accounts, and the statutory filings that follow.
Planning a change
Advisory and succession work alongside the core compliance, timed before the decision rather than after.
Compliance runs on dates. Start the work before the date does.
Most of the deadlines a UK limited company faces are fixed by statute, and the cost of a late filing is not the penalty alone. Confirmation statements, annual accounts, Corporation Tax returns, and PAYE reporting all arrive on a schedule, so the practical question is not whether they are due but whether the records behind them are ready.
Contact CrownfieldQuestions people ask before choosing
Short answers to the things that come up most often in a first conversation. If yours is not here, the contact page is the shortest route to a reply.
Can I start with one service and add others later?
Yes. Plenty of clients begin with company formation alone and come back when the first employee is hired or the first VAT threshold approaches. Each service area is priced and scoped on its own, so adding payroll or management accounts later does not disturb what is already in place.
Do I need to change accountants to work with you?
No. If you already have an accountant for annual accounts, we can handle payroll, bookkeeping, or management reporting alongside them. Where a full handover makes more sense, the transfer is a matter of records and written authority rather than a break in continuity.
How far in advance should succession planning start?
Earlier than most owners expect. Valuation, tax treatment, and governance arrangements all take shape over more than one tax year, and a transfer to family, to management, or through an Employee Ownership Trust each carries different conditions. A first conversation costs nothing and usually reveals which route is realistic.
What records do I need to keep for annual accounts?
Bank statements for every account, sales and purchase records, payroll summaries where you employ staff, and any loan or lease agreements the company has signed. UK company law requires records to be kept for six years from the end of the accounting period, so it pays to keep them together from the start.
Where do you work from, and who do I speak to?
Crownfield Limited is based at 50 Victoria Avenue, Caversham, Reading, and works with companies across England and Wales. Most matters are handled by phone and email, and you can reach the team on 756905136 or at [email protected] between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday.
Tell us where the business is, and we will say what is due
One conversation is usually enough to place a company in the right combination of services. If you would rather read first, the individual service pages set out what each piece of work involves.
Registered office
50 Victoria Avenue, Caversham, Reading, England
Telephone
756905136
Opening hours
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Registration
Crownfield Limited, registered in England and Wales, company number 16239480