5 simple steps to perfect share certificates

Our basic share certificate template is completely free to use. You can alternatively purchase unlimited use of one of our premium professionally-designed templates.

Unlike other templates the Inform Direct software keeps a record of the share certificates you’ve created – so you can easily see which ones are active, and letting you cancel retired certificates. We also enable you to pull in existing shareholder information from Companies House into share certificates.

We looked in another article at why you should be using Inform Direct to create and manage your share certificates. Here we go through the simple step by step process of creating share certificates like the one below.

share cert 1

1 Register for a free account

Setting up your company is easy and we take you step by step through importing your existing shareholder information from Companies House. There’s no software to install, no obligation and no charge. Register your account to start the process and, while we don’t think you’ll need any help, the Inform Direct team are here if you need us.

Once you’ve completed the simple setup wizard, you may need to add in or update the correspondence address for some shareholders. Just click on the pencil next to a shareholder’s name on the Shareholders tab and select “Edit Personal Details”. You can then select an existing address or enter a new address to use as the Correspondence Address held for Shares.

Cert step 1

2 Add a company logo (if you want to)

If you want your company logo to appear on the share certificates you create, select the “Edit Company Inform” button from the Company tab. Click “Choose file” and you’ll be able to upload your logo as an image from wherever it’s saved on your computer or network.

Once you’ve uploaded the logo you want to use, select the green “Save changes to details” button.

logo

3 Create the share certificate records

From the Shareholder tab, access the Share certificates list by clicking on the “Maintain Share Certificates” button. Then press “Add new share certificate” to create a new certificate.

You then just need to fill in the details you want to appear on the certificate. You’ll be offered the details of all the existing shareholders so you don’t need to enter them afresh. Just select them from the dropdown list that appears and all their details will be shown on the share certificate.

How you choose to number your share certificates is largely up to you. If you have multiple share classes, you can number each class separately or have just one number series covering shares certificates in all classes.

share cert creation

4 Print your share certificates

The share certificates list shows all the share certificate records you’ve created. You can produce a physical share certificate by selecting the “Print” option via the pencil next to the record. The share certificate itself will be produced on your desktop and you can then print, save and share it. You can go back in and find it again at any time. You can also change the details on a share certificate by selecting ‘Edit / regenerate certificate’ option.  In addition, if you need to cancel or delete a share certificate that is no longer current or was created in error respective, select the ‘Cancel / delete certificate’ option – by keeping the list up to date you’ll easily be able to see at a glance the active share certificates for your company.

Print share certificate

5 Create share certificates when you transfer or allot shares

Inform Direct does so much more than produce great share certificates. Amongst a whole load of other features, you can keep an up to date record of new share allotments (which are automatically reported electronically to Companies House) and transfers of existing shares. Whenever you allot or transfer shares, you’ll have the option to create a new share certificate for the new holding. You can either do it there and then or, if you prefer, wait until later, especially where there is more than one transaction to the same person, and just add one new certificate for the whole new holding as we’ve described above.

Share transfre produce certificate

If you want to create great share certificates using our basic template or by purchasing unlimited use of one of our premium templates and have all the tools you need to manage shareholder and other company records, register to use Inform Direct today.

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