Custom Notes: Add Going Concern, Related Party Disclosures and More to Your Financial Statements

Financial statements tell a story — but sometimes the numbers alone aren't enough. Directors often need to provide additional context, explanations, or disclosures alongside the statutory accounts. Until now, WeFile generated three standard notes automatically (Accounting Policies, Basis of Preparation, and Employee Information), but there was no way to include your own.

Today, we're excited to introduce Custom Notes — a feature that lets you add as many additional notes as you need to your financial statements, directly within the filing wizard. Whether you need a going concern disclosure, related party transactions, post balance sheet events, or dividend declarations, you can now include them all.

Your custom notes are automatically numbered (starting from Note 4) and appear in every output document: the iXBRL accounts submitted to Companies House, the PDF accounts you download, and the CT600 XML sent to HMRC.

Notes to the financial statements are a critical part of annual accounts. They provide essential context that helps users of the accounts — including HMRC, Companies House, shareholders, creditors, and auditors — understand the figures presented in the profit and loss account and balance sheet.

Here are some common scenarios where custom notes are essential:

• Going Concern — If your company has net liabilities or is dependent on director funding, a going concern note explains why the accounts are still prepared on a going concern basis. This is one of the most common disclosures for small companies.
• Related Party Transactions — Loans from directors, transactions with associated companies, or dealings with shareholders often require disclosure to ensure transparency.
• Post Balance Sheet Events — Significant events that occurred after the year end but before the accounts were approved (such as a major contract, acquisition, or loss) should be disclosed.
• Dividends — If dividends were declared or paid during the year, a note can detail the amounts and dates, providing clarity to shareholders and tax advisors.
• Contingent Liabilities — Potential obligations that depend on future events, such as pending litigation or guarantees given to third parties.
• Director Loans — Details of any loans to or from directors, including terms and balances outstanding at the year end.

Previously, if you needed any of these disclosures, you had to prepare and submit your accounts outside of WeFile. Now, everything stays in one place.

Adding custom notes is straightforward. Here's how it works:

1. Open your filing in the filing wizard and navigate to the Notes step (between the Balance Sheet and Review steps).
2. Click "Add First Note" to create your first custom note, or "Add Another Note" if you already have existing notes.
3. Enter a Title — this becomes the note heading in your financial statements (e.g. "Going Concern", "Related Party Transactions").
4. Enter the Body — write the full text of your disclosure. Multi-line content is fully supported.
5. Click "Save Note" to add it to your filing.
6. Repeat for as many notes as you need (up to 20 per filing).
7. Click "Save & Continue" to proceed to the Review step.

You can edit or delete any note at any time before submission. Deleting a note will prompt you for confirmation to prevent accidental removal.

Once you've added your custom notes, they are automatically integrated into every document WeFile generates for your filing:

• iXBRL Accounts (Companies House) — Your notes appear in the "Notes to the Financial Statements" section, numbered sequentially starting from Note 4. They are rendered with proper headings and paragraph formatting within the XHTML document.
• PDF Accounts — Each custom note gets its own clearly formatted section in the PDF, with the note number, title, and body text. The table of contents is automatically updated to include the correct page references.
• CT600 XML (HMRC) — The notes content is embedded within the iXBRL computation document attached to your CT600 submission.

The three statutory notes (Accounting Policies, Basis of Preparation, and Employee Information) always appear first as Notes 1–3. Your custom notes follow sequentially as Note 4, Note 5, and so on.

One of the most common custom notes is a going concern disclosure. Here's a real-world example of how you might use this feature:

Title: Going Concern

Body:

The balance sheet shows net liabilities of approximately £940,000 at the year end. This deficit has been funded by the directors and they have confirmed that they will not seek payment for a period of at least 12 months from the date of approval of the accounts and that they will continue to provide financial support to ensure that the company can meet all its liabilities as they fall due. Accordingly, the accounts have been prepared on a going concern basis.

This note would appear as Note 4 in your financial statements, immediately after the Employee Information note. It provides clear justification for the going concern basis despite the company showing net liabilities — exactly what Companies House and HMRC expect to see.

Before you submit your filing, the Review step displays a summary of all your custom notes. This gives you a final opportunity to verify that your disclosures are correct and complete before the documents are generated and submitted.

The summary shows the title and a preview of each note's body text. If anything needs changing, you can navigate back to the Notes step to make edits.

You can also download preview versions of your Accounts PDF and iXBRL documents from the Review step to see exactly how your notes will appear in the final submission.

If you create an amendment filing from an existing submission, all custom notes from the original filing are automatically carried over to the amendment. This saves you from having to re-enter the same disclosures when filing revised accounts.

You can then modify, add, or remove notes as needed for the amended filing before resubmitting.

Custom notes are fully supported through the WeFile Developer API. When saving a filing via the API, include a notesData array in your request body:

• Each note object should contain a title (string, max 200 characters) and a body (string, max 5,000 characters).
• You can include up to 20 notes per filing.
• Notes are preserved when creating amendment filings via the API.

For full schema details and code examples, visit the API Documentation page.

To ensure your notes are compatible with HMRC and Companies House submission requirements, we've applied sensible validation limits:

• Maximum 20 notes per filing — more than enough for the vast majority of small company accounts.
• Title length — up to 200 characters per note title.
• Body length — up to 5,000 characters per note body, with full multi-line support.

These limits ensure that your generated iXBRL and PDF documents remain well-structured and compliant with filing gateway requirements.

Custom notes are available now for all WeFile users — no additional subscription or upgrade required. Simply open any filing in the wizard and navigate to the Notes step to start adding your disclosures.

If you have any questions about what notes to include in your accounts, our AI Assistant can help guide you based on your company's specific circumstances. You can also browse our Help Center or reach out via the Contact page.

We're committed to making WeFile the most complete and straightforward CT600 filing platform available. Custom notes bring us one step closer to covering every disclosure scenario your company might need.