Software used to file company accounts, month by month

In September 2026, 92,677 of the 382,323 accounts filed electronically came from Companies House’s own filing service, which is 24.2%. Across the 33 months the share has stayed between 20.9% (in December 2025) and 30.6% (in February 2024).

Over these months, filings naming “Company Accounts and Tax Online”, HMRC’s joint service, fell from 25,788 in March 2026 to 35 in April 2026 and none from May 2026 onwards. Filings naming FreeAgent rose from 1,803 in January 2024 to 3,579 in September 2026. The share from Companies House’s own service has moved less, ranging from 20.9% in December 2025 to 30.6% in February 2024.

Companies House’s own online accounts filing has not closed yet. Companies House says it will close for accounts from 1 April 2028, and in September 2026 it still handled 24.2% of the accounts filed electronically. The service that did close, on 31 March 2026, was HMRC’s joint service for filing accounts and the Company Tax Return together, which the filings name as “Company Accounts and Tax Online”.

Each name below is the product as the tag names it. We have not worked out who makes each one, and a count is a fact about filings, not a judgement about the product. The last three rows cover the remaining products together, tags that name no product (such as a bare version number) and filings with no tag at all, so the shares add up to every electronic filing that month.

Some filings name “Company Accounts and Tax Online”. In January 2024 it was named in 16,965 filings, and the last month with any was April 2026, with 35. The fall matches the closure of HMRC’s joint service on 31 March 2026, which HMRC described like this: “Companies have used this service to file their accounts and Company Tax Returns at the same time with Companies House and HMRC, but it will close in 12 months’ time.” The counts alone cannot prove why the name stopped appearing, so we treat the closure as the likely reason rather than a certain one.

In September 2026, 6,980 accountancy firms were named in company accounts filed electronically at Companies House, and the accounts software used by the most of them was Taxfiler, with 2,385 firms, followed by IRIS Accounts Production with 2,105.

Many company accounts also name the accountancy firm that prepared them, and in September 2026 that was true of 59,331 of the 382,323 filings, or 15.5%. Counting firms rather than filings shows which packages accountancy practices rely on, which matters because every company that files through Companies House’s own service today will need software from 1 April 2028. Each firm is counted once a month, on the package it used for most of its filings that month.

We never keep or publish the name of any firm. Each name is read from the filing and scrambled at once with a secret key, so we can tell when the same firm appears again without storing who it is. Only counts of 10 or more firms appear here. A smaller count is shown as “fewer than 10”, and where a total would let someone work out a small count, the next smallest is shown as “withheld”. A firm that writes its name in different ways in different filings is counted more than once. Our privacy notice explains how firm names are handled and how a firm can ask to be left out.

The number of firms named rises and falls through the year with the filing calendar, so it is fairer to compare a package with the others in the same month than with itself in a different one. Between January 2024 and September 2026, the package that gained the most firms was Acorah Software Products - Accounts Production, from 205 to 489, and the one that lost the most was IRIS Accounts Production, from 2,405 to 2,105. The monthly counts cover every package with a count in September 2026.

A firm counts as having moved when the package it used most in a month is a different product from the one it used when we last saw it. The first month, January 2024, has nothing earlier to compare with. A move between two packages is named only when 10 or more firms made it that month; the rest are counted together as other moves.

Every product’s count for every month is in a CSV file of the software used to file company accounts, with one line for each month and product. The same counts are in the open data API as /api/v1/accounts-software-monthly.json. If you would like to hear when a new month is added, there is an Atom feed with one item for each month.

The counts of accountancy firms are in a CSV file of accountancy firms by accounts software, with one line for each month and package, and in the open data API as /api/v1/practice-panel-monthly.json. Both keep the words “fewer than 10” and “withheld” where the table on this page does.

Source: Companies House, Free Accounts Data Product: https://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_monthlyaccountsdata.html. We read each monthly download, kept only the count of each software tag and deleted the download, and we last read one on 25 October 2026. Companies House did not prepare these counts and does not endorse Acrenvo or any product.

Our counts are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, as the rest of our open data is, so you are welcome to reuse them with a credit to Acrenvo and to Companies House as the source.