What a filleted set of accounts is, and whether you need one

Filleted accounts are a small UK company's statutory accounts with the profit and loss account and the directors' report removed before filing at Companies House, leaving an abridged balance sheet and the notes the small companies regime still requires. The name comes from "filleting": literally taking the profit and loss out of the full set before it goes on the public record.

Who qualifies

Filleting is available under the small companies regime, part of the FRS 102 Section 1A framework for small entities, to companies that meet the Companies Act 2006 thresholds for a small company: broadly, a turnover, balance sheet total and employee count each under the relevant limits, assessed for two consecutive years (with some first-year exceptions). A qualifying small company still has to prepare full accounts, including the P&L, for its members and for HMRC. Filleting only changes what gets filed publicly at Companies House.

Why companies do it

A full set of statutory accounts discloses turnover, gross margin and detailed profit figures to anyone who searches the company on Companies House, competitors included. Filleted accounts let a small company meet its legal filing obligation without putting that commercial detail on the public record. The balance sheet itself is not hidden; the P&L and the narrative directors' report are.

The exemption statement

A filleted balance sheet has to carry a specific statement confirming the exemption was used, referencing the relevant Companies Act 2006 sections (s477 for the audit exemption and s476, where members have not required an audit) so that anyone reading the filed accounts can see which regime the company relied on. Getting this statement right, word for word, matters: it is a compliance detail, not a formality, and it is easy to get subtly wrong by hand.

Filleted accounts are not just "hiding some numbers"

It is worth being precise here because the term gets used loosely. Filleting is a defined, regulated abridgement under a specific accounting framework (FRS 102 Section 1A), with a specific exemption statement, available only to companies that meet the small companies thresholds. It is not a general option to omit whatever a director would rather not disclose, and it does not change what has to be prepared for HMRC or for the company's own members. A company that does not qualify as small cannot fillet its accounts, no matter how sensitive the underlying figures feel.

How Counting Sheet handles this

Counting Sheet computes a filleted set of accounts as one of its standard UK reports, alongside the full balance sheet, profit and loss, trial balance, cash flow and a corporation tax estimate. Because the underlying journal is already validated double-entry, the abridged balance sheet and its exemption statement are generated directly from the same ledger everything else in the app reports from, rather than being assembled by hand on a separate tab where a line could easily be missed or the statement wording could drift from what the Companies Act actually requires.

If your company is close to the small companies thresholds, or you are not sure whether filing full or filleted accounts is the right call this year, that is a judgement for your accountant based on your actual turnover, balance sheet total and employee numbers; what Counting Sheet removes is the manual work of building the report once you know which one you need.