Profit and Loss Accounts: Your Figures Go on Record in 2028

From 1 April 2028, small companies and micro-entities must file profit and loss accounts at Companies House. For the first time, your turnover and profit margins become part of your statutory filing. The government confirmed this on 9 June 2026, under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. There’s an opt-out from publishing those figures publicly. The detail isn’t settled, though, and the data still leaves your hands. For most owner-managed companies, this is the change in the package that stings.

What’s Changing for Profit and Loss Accounts

Today, small companies and micro-entities file slimmed-down accounts. Many file a balance sheet alone, keeping profit and turnover off the public record. The reforms close that option. From April 2028, a profit and loss account becomes a required part of your filing.

These changes sit under the same Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act that brought in director identity checks. They also remove abridged accounts and move all filing to commercial software. Of everything in the package, the profit and loss requirement is the one that exposes your numbers. For the wider picture, see our overview of the Companies House accounts reforms.

The aim is transparency. Open profit data helps lenders, investors and Companies House judge a business properly. The cost is your commercial privacy, traded for a cleaner public register.

What a Profit and Loss Account Reveals

A balance sheet shows what you own and owe at a single moment. Your profit and loss account shows how you trade across the year. The two tell very different stories.

Your profit and loss account sets out turnover, costs and the profit left at the end. From it, a reader can estimate your margins, overheads and true profitability. That’s commercially sensitive in any competitive market.

Filing it publicly changes what outsiders know about you. Competitors can gauge whether to undercut you. Suppliers can judge how much room you have on price. A buyer could value the business before you’ve said a word.

Why the Opt-Out Isn’t Full Privacy

The opt-out sounds like the answer. Not quite. It stops your profit and loss account appearing on the public register, but you must still file the account in full.

Companies House still receives that account. HMRC and law enforcement receive it too. Your figures are shielded from competitors and the public, not from the state.

The opt-out mechanism is also unconfirmed. Government guidance on how to claim it will follow later. Until it lands, no one can tell you the exact process or deadline. A privacy protection you can’t yet rely on is a weak basis for planning.

These reforms have already moved once. Originally due in April 2027, they were delayed a year after businesses pushed back. The direction is settled now, but the fine print, including the opt-out, is still being written. Rules still in flux are the ones worth watching closely.

What This Means for Small Companies

If you run a small or micro company, you’ve probably valued the privacy. Minimal accounts keep your margins away from competitors, suppliers and staff. That ends in 2028.

The public register is open to anyone. Lenders, competitors and credit agencies all use it. A published profit and loss account hands rivals a roadmap to your turnover, margins and cost base.

For some companies, the numbers are barely sensitive. A micro-entity with one income stream has little to hide. For others, the exposure is real, and the opt-out is what protects them.

There’s no undo here, either. Once a year’s profit and loss account is public, that snapshot is out. Future filings build the picture, year on year. The decision to protect your figures is one to get right from the first filing under the new rules.

How Hamlyns Can Help

We prepare and file annual year-end accounts, profit and loss included. These reforms change what goes in your filing, not whether we handle it.

We’ll prepare your profit and loss account to the required standard, and file everything via software in the correct format. On the opt-out, we’ll advise the moment the rules are confirmed, so your figures stay private if that’s your choice. Where your company sits in a group, we’ll check which size rules actually apply to you.

If you’ve relied on minimal accounts to keep your numbers quiet, the ground is shifting. Speak to the Hamlyns team now, and you’ll be ready well before 2028. Start with a conversation.