Correcting a mistake
What to do depends entirely on one thing: has the register been opened?
Before it is opened — just fix it
While the company is a draft, nothing is on the evidence chain. Retype it, delete it, add the thing you forgot. There is nothing to correct because nothing has been asserted yet.
If the whole draft is wrong — transcribed from the wrong company's file, say — Discard this draft on the company's page removes it and everything in it.
The discard itself is recorded against your practice, with who did it and how much was in it. That is deliberate, and it is not an accusation: it exists so that keeping a register in draft forever cannot become a way of quietly retyping history until you like the result. Discarding a bad transcription is completely ordinary. Do it without hesitation.
After it is opened — record a correction
Once the register is open, nothing is edited. That is the whole point, and it is what a statutory register has always done. Four things are available instead, and which one you want depends on what actually happened.
The certificate says the wrong thing → Correct the certificate
Use this when a certificate itself is wrong: the wrong number of shares, the wrong date on its face, the wrong distinguishing numbers. Correct sits beside each certificate in the ledger.
What happens depends on the register, and the page tells you which before you commit:
- While it is a draft, the certificate is simply changed. Nothing is cancelled and nothing is recorded.
- Once the register is open, it works exactly as a paper register does — the wrong certificate is cancelled and a replacement is issued for the corrected figures. Both stay visible, with a rectification recording what was wrong. The holding does not lapse and the member is not ceased.
The holder and the share class cannot be changed this way. A certificate naming the wrong person or the wrong class is not a mistyped certificate — it is the claim that a different transaction should have been recorded, so cancel it and record the one that should have happened.
Do not cancel a certificate in order to retype it. Cancelling on its own removes the shares from the holder without issuing anything back, and if it was their only certificate they cease to be a member. That is right for a lost or replaced certificate and wrong for a typo.
The fact was wrong when it was recorded → Rectification
Use this when the register says something untrue: a misspelled name, the wrong address, a date that was mistyped.
A rectification is recorded against the entry it corrects. The original stays visible and the correction sits beside it, so anyone reading the register later can see both the error and the fix. That is what the Companies Act contemplates (s.125 covers the court-ordered case; the same record serves an ordinary correction).
A rectification is a note, not an edit. It records that something was wrong; it does not change the figure. If what is wrong is a certificate, use Correct above — that is the one that changes what the register says, and it records a rectification for you.
Rectify on the company's page.
The certificate should never have been issued, or is being replaced → Cancel the certificate
A cancelled certificate stays on the ledger, struck through. It does not disappear, because a certificate that vanished would leave a hole where a shareholder's evidence used to be.
The member has left → Cease the member
Not a correction at all — a real event. A ceased member stays on the register for ten years after cessation (s.121), and the system keeps them there rather than hiding them.
Everything was wrong from the start → Start the register again
If the transcription was wrong throughout, fifty rectifications will produce a register nobody can read. There is a proper remedy for that, and it is on its own page.
The question to ask yourself
Is the register broadly right, with some facts wrong in it?
Yes → rectify. It is the correct remedy and it keeps the register readable.
No, it was wrong from the beginning → start it again.
What you cannot do
You cannot delete an entry from the evidence chain. Not through the application, not by asking support, not with database access — the database refuses deletion and truncation of chain entries outright.
This is a feature, and it is the one the product is sold on. A record that could be made to go away when it became inconvenient would be worth nothing to the shareholder relying on it.
It also has a consequence worth knowing: personal data written into the chain cannot be selectively erased. If that matters for a particular register, it needs deciding before the register is opened, not after.