The yearly company review explained in plain English

A company does not renew its registration the way a business name does. Instead, once a year, ASIC reviews it and the company pays an annual review fee. You will hear it called the company review, the annual review or the annual statement. Same thing.

The review date is the anniversary of the day the company was registered. A company registered on 20 August has a review date of 20 August every year, no matter when its financial year ends. The date is on the certificate of registration, and if you cannot find it, our team can check it for you on 1300 070 000, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Melbourne time.

Around that date, ASIC issues the company's annual statement and an invoice for the review fee. The statement sets out what ASIC holds about the company, such as the registered office, directors and shareholders.

Both documents go to the company's contact address on ASIC's records. Companies move. Accountants change. The person who set the company up leaves. When that address goes stale, the statement and invoice turn up somewhere nobody at the company looks, and the first anyone hears of it is a late fee.

The fee and the solvency resolution

The review fee has to be paid within a set time after the review date. Miss it and late fees are added, and they grow if the payment is very late, so leaving it saves nothing. ASIC sets the amounts and changes them from time to time, which is why we do not quote them here. The current figures are on the ASIC website.

In the same period, the directors are generally expected to pass a solvency resolution. That is a formal decision, recorded by the directors, that in their opinion there are reasonable grounds to believe the company can pay its debts as and when they fall due. It stays with the company's records. For a one-director company, it is a short document signed by that one director.

If the directors cannot honestly say the company is solvent, that is the moment to speak to an accountant or lawyer, and quickly. This article is general information only.

The annual statement is also your yearly prompt to read through the company's details. Anything that changed and was never updated needs correcting with ASIC, and there is a time limit for that. Changes are usually made by an officeholder or the company's accountant. We do not lodge changes to a company's details.

A company that leaves its review fee unpaid for long enough can be deregistered by ASIC. If the warning letters go to an old address too, a director may only find out when the bank account stops working, or a supplier mentions the company no longer exists. Deregistration ends the company as a legal entity, any property it still owns passes to ASIC, and getting it reinstated takes time, paperwork and fees.

Paying it through us

This is the part we take off your hands. On our company review page you search for the company by name or ACN and pay us. We then pay the ASIC annual review fee for the company, and we email you a solvency resolution document, ready for the directors to sign and keep with the company records.

That covers the fee and the paperwork for the resolution. Checking that the details on the annual statement are right stays with the directors, because we do not lodge changes to a company's details.

If the company needs a registered office address that is not someone's home, our Premium Registered Office add-on gives it a Sydney CBD address, with mail scanned for you. Our team can answer questions about either on the number above.