Administration
The unglamorous half of a head office: registers, correspondence, coordination, and the discipline of putting things in writing.
Binders. Photograph used for illustration; it does not show records or premises of the company.
The work carried here
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Records and registers
The company’s own statutory records and registers are maintained, and the returns a company registered in Scotland is required to make are prepared and filed from here.
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Correspondence
Letters, notices and account paperwork addressed to the registered office are logged, answered, and kept with the matter they belong to, so that the next question about the same matter starts where the last one finished.
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Coordination
Where a question touches more than one interest, the head office is the point at which it is put together and answered once, rather than answered differently in two places.
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Written confirmation
Anything the company agrees, permits or confirms is issued in writing over the company’s name. That is the document to keep; a verbal indication is not one.
One address, one file
Because the registered office is the only address the company publishes, everything arrives in one place and is filed once. If you have written before, quoting your earlier reference will usually get you a faster and more useful reply.
Small things, done consistently
Administration of this kind is not complicated work, but it is easy to do badly. The habits that keep it honest are ordinary ones: date everything, file it where it will be found, answer in the same medium the question arrived in, and never let a verbal understanding stand in for a written one.
The result a counterparty notices is simply this — when they ask the company something twice, they get the same answer.
