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Track Companies House filing deadlines with Google Sheets, Gmail & interactive alerts

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🎯 Accounting Alerts Automation

Purpose: Automatically track Companies House filing deadlines for UK accounting firms and prevent costly penalties (£150-£1,500 per missed deadline).

How it works:

  • Daily automated checks pull live deadline data from Companies House API
  • Color-coded email alerts (Red/Orange/Yellow/Green) prioritize urgent deadlines
  • Interactive "Yes/No" buttons let recipients confirm completion status
  • All data syncs back to Google Sheets for complete audit trail

Value: Saves 2-3 hours/week per firm while eliminating manual tracking errors.

⚙️ Daily Deadline Check & Alert System

Runs: Every weekday at 5 PM (Mon-Fri)

What happens:

  1. Read Company Database - Fetches all tracked companies from Google Sheets
  2. Get Company Data - Pulls live filing deadlines from Companies House API for each company
  3. Update Due Dates - Syncs latest deadline data back to the tracking sheet
  4. Build Interactive Email - Creates HTML email with:
    • Color-coded urgency indicators (days remaining)
    • Sortable table by due date
    • Clickable Yes/No confirmation buttons for each company
  5. Send via Gmail - Delivers consolidated report to accounting team

Why automated: Manual deadline checking across 10-50+ companies is time-consuming and error-prone. This ensures nothing falls through the cracks.

✅ Email Response Handler (Webhook Flow)

Triggered when: Recipient clicks "Yes" or "No" button in the alert email

What happens:

  1. Webhook - Receives confirmation status (company_number, company_name, yes/no)
  2. Process Data - Extracts response details from the webhook payload
  3. Update Sheet - Records confirmation status in Google Sheets with timestamp
  4. Confirmation Page - Displays success message to user

Why this matters: Provides instant feedback to the user and creates an audit trail of who confirmed what and when. No separate tracking system needed—everything updates automatically in the same spreadsheet.

Result: Accountability without administrative burden.

📋 Setup Requirements

Google Sheets Database Structure: Create a sheet with these columns:

  • company_number (manually entered)
  • company_name (manually entered)
  • accounts_due (auto-updated)
  • confirmation_due (auto-updated)
  • confirmation_submitted (updated via email clicks)
  • last_updated (auto-timestamp)

Required Credentials:

  • Google Sheets OAuth (for reading/writing data)
  • Companies House API key (free from api.company-information.service.gov.uk)
  • Gmail OAuth (for sending alerts)

Webhook Configuration: Update webhook URL in "Build Interactive Email" node to match your n8n instance.

Time to Setup: ~15 minutes once credentials are configured.