How SwiftRegistry works

Read this before you set up your first company. It takes three minutes and it will save you an afternoon.

The one thing to understand

A register you are typing is not yet a register. It is a draft, and a draft is completely safe: you can retype anything, delete anything, or throw the whole thing away and start over. Nothing is permanent, nothing is recorded, and nobody is watching.

Opening the register is the moment that changes. From then on, entries are not edited. A mistake is answered by recording a correction against it, which is how a statutory register has always worked and is the reason the record is worth anything.

So the sequence is:

Transcribe everything — members, share classes, holdings, certificates — from whatever the company's records are today.
Check it, properly, against the paper it came from.
Open the register. Only then does anything become permanent.

There is no time limit on step 1. A draft can sit for a week while you chase a missing certificate.

Why it works that way

Most registers that arrive here were not created here. They are in a folder, or a spreadsheet, or somebody's filing cabinet, and they get typed in. Transcription is where the mistakes are — a transposed date, a share class entered at £1.00 when it should be £0.01.

Before drafts existed, the first keystroke was already part of the record, so a typo could only be answered by formally recording that somebody had made a typo. That is the right remedy for an error in a live register and an absurd one for a transcription nobody had finished.

The draft exists to absorb exactly that. Use it.

What happens when you open the register

One entry is written to the company's evidence chain. It records that this history was transcribed and confirmed by you, on that date — not that SwiftRegistry witnessed a certificate being issued in 1998.

That distinction matters and the system is careful about it. A certificate printed from a transcribed register says so on its face. It does not claim to have witnessed something it did not.

From that point every statutory event — a member registered, shares allotted, a transfer, a certificate cancelled — is recorded on the chain as it happens.

What the evidence chain is for

It makes changes to the record visible. Entries cannot be quietly edited or removed: the database itself refuses, not just the application.

Be clear about what that does and does not prove:

It proves what was recorded, and when, and that it has not been altered since.
It does not prove the facts you entered were true. Nothing can. If you type the wrong address, the chain faithfully records that you typed the wrong address.

That is not a weakness — it is the same thing a signed and dated minute book does, and it is what makes the register useful in a dispute.

Where it fits legally

The register of members is not a copy of what Companies House holds. Under the Companies Act 2006 it is closer to the other way round: membership is constituted by the entry in the register (s.112), and the register is prima facie evidence of what it records (s.127). What Companies House holds about shareholdings comes largely from the confirmation statement — a periodic snapshot filed by the company.

So the document you are keeping here is the one that carries the evidential weight. That is why the care at step 2 is worth taking.

SwiftRegistry is a record-keeping system, not a filing service and not a source of legal advice. Nothing entered here is filed with Companies House.