Almost every business we take on has at least one filing outstanding. It is rarely negligence. Filings sit outside the daily work of serving customers, nobody owns them, and nothing bad appears to happen when they slip.
Then something changes. A bank asks for evidence of good standing. A corporate client wants your registration documents before onboarding you as a vendor. A tender lists compliance requirements you cannot meet in the time available. Staff join, and registrations that were a plan become an obligation.
The filings that slip
- Company registration details that were never updated after a change
- Annual returns that quietly lapsed
- Pension and Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund registration
- Industrial Training Fund obligations
- Financial Reporting Council registration, where it applies
- Business premises registration
- Trademark protection for a brand that has become valuable
Two habits prevent most of the damage
Keep one calendar of every obligation the business carries, with a name against each. Then treat any change in the business, such as new staff, a new location, a new shareholder, or a new line of work, as a prompt to check what that change added to the list.
If you are already behind
Order matters. Deal with anything accruing a penalty, then whatever is blocking revenue, then the rest. That is usually how we sequence it when we take on a back office.
Getting current is rarely as painful as owners expect. Staying current is mostly a matter of somebody owning the calendar.
