WRITTEN ON March 28th, 2009 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Design: user-oriented, Save Time and Money, What do we want?

Oh dear, what a disappointment: This online service provided via a PFI, for filing irrelevant but compulsory company data online, doesn’t work with ordinary PCs.

Disclaimer: There’s no-one “at home” on the “help” desk, outside office hours. So I may have got this wrong.

Each year, every company in the UK from the smallest company to the largest plc has to file their company accounts with “Companies House.” Failure to file these accounts in a format acceptable to Companies House, within their deadline, can result in very severe financial “penalties” and possibly a criminal record for company directors. For some unknown reason, the UK government has recently shortened the deadline… and greatly increased the “late filing penalties.”

In other words, Companies House takes itself very, very seriously: Perhaps rather more seriously than it is viewed by most “outsiders” and “victims.” As with much of the “once great” DTI, it is hard to see what “added value” Companies House really provides to the UK economy; and what really could not be provided in a less costly, less bureaucratic way?

That said, the individual staff have usually tried to be helpful.

Wibbis: 1. Companies House should be abolished and any really essential aspects should be absorbed by other agencies.

Online Filing Process:

Until recently, company accounts had to be filed on paper, not as a fax or an email. The paper and printing had to be suitable for micro-filming. A couple of years ago, and years after even the HMRC, Companies House launched its online filing service which accepts “abbreviated accounts” from small companies.

The individual responsible, signs-up and receives credentials (by post); using these credentials, they download a PDF live “form” which is already customised for their company. This PDF form runs, off-line, within ordinary (free) Adobe Reader. It accepts the data entry, checks it for errors and permits printing of draft copies etc. When the accounts have been approved, the individual goes back online clicks a “submit” button – which sends the data to the Companies House servers. This should trigger an acknowledgement email and also “fix” the data in the PDF form so that it becomes “read only.” Some days later, there should be a second email which confirms that the accounts have been accepted.

What Actually Happened:

Unfortunately, there are no “test” facilities built into this process: There is no way of knowing whether it will work until you actually try it. Worse, when it does fail, there are no indications of what failed or of how to overcome the failure.

Wibbis:

2. This process should have a “test” button which checks for correct operation and connectivity.
3. When the process fails, it should display helpful, intelligible error messages.

I opened the PDF form, using Adobe Reader 7.09 on WinXP Home SP3. After entering and checking the data, printing a copy, I “signed” the form and clicked “submit.”

There was a lot of hard disk activity (possibly the anti-virus software receiving an auto-update) but nothing else seemed to happen. I tried this again several times over several hours; re-entering the data, re-checking it, clicking “submit.” Nothing seemed to happen, no confirmation email appeared, my account at Companies House showed no recent uploads.

I checked and re-checked the settings of Adobe Reader. (In the past – by trial and error – I’ve discovered that this Companies House process requires features which I’d normally keep disabled.) I also checked that the Firewall was not blocking this transmission.

By this time, the Companies House servers had been closed-down for the night.

Next morning, I had a brain wave: Perhaps the process was using something in Internet Explorer? Perhaps it could not cope with my brand new Internet Explorer 8? So, more hours un-installing MS IE8 and its other additions; returning to MS IE7.

But, even after repeating the whole process, “submit” still didn’t work.

In desperation, I dusted off my 10-year old Win98se Thinkpad, in the hopes that its MS IE6 would work with Companies House. Unfortunately, its Adobe Reader 6 would not open the Companies House PDF form.

The Companies House “help” web pages seem to admit that there is a problem with Vista, but give no hint that my WinXP PC shouldn’t work. Despite that, I guessed that something about my PC was stopping the process from working.

Off to the Library:

I phoned the local library to book time on one of their PCs, asking the elderly volunteer librarian what operating system and version of MS Internet Explorer it contained. 😉

Luckily, this ancient, slow PC had Adobe Reader 8 and MS Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP. After repeating the process, I clicked the submit button and received the success message.

So, thanks to a hard working elderly volunteer librarian we seem to have overcome the IT faults at Companies House… this time. But, had I been working at the Devon office, PCs at the local library run Windows 2000 – too old for this PDF form. Elsewhere, library PCs run (apparently incompatible) Vista; some run Linux so would have neither Adobe Reader, not Internet Explorer.

Wibbis:

4. If government demands that we file data online, the online services should actually work – first time – and should be based on standards which suit the PCs that people actually use.
5. The rest of us – even elderly volunteer librarians – work outside “office hours.” Couldn’t government staff provide some sort of “help” desk; especially when they know that their software has bugs?
6. The closure of Companies House could make a useful contribution to reducing government spending and reducing the unnecessary burdens on UK industry.