Changes to your business website and email footers

It’s been in every business newsletter recently, but just in case you didn’t see it, there have been important changes in the Companies Act which came into effect on January 1st 2007. These changes require that certain information needs to be put onto business websites and email footers. Companies failing to do this are in breach of the Companies Act and risk a fine. (Great, eh?)

From now on, every company must list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website (this information is already required on business letters but must now be added to websites, order forms and electronic documents, including email invoices).

Here’s a quick checklist of the minimum information required on a company website:

• Names, geographic address and email address of service provider
• Name of organisation (if a company trades under a different name, both should be supplied)
• Registered office address if the business is a company
• Company’s registration number and place of registration
• Company’s VAT number
• Membership details and registration number of any trade or professional association membership.

Apparently, the information doesn’t have to appear on every web page, which is small saving grace, I suppose!

If you sell to consumers (as opposed to other businesses) there is also further information required, governed by the Distance Selling Regulations.

Yet another thing that the pressured business owner has to be aware of. (Now you understand why I felt so driven to publish the first Essential Business Guide. Over the years, in my own businesses, I had slowly realised just how much we all have to know to comply with all the different rules and regulations. I strongly suspected that I couldn’t be the only one who was struggling to find all that information in one place, written in a way that I could quickly understand.)

There is so much we need to know. And the scary thing is, we don’t know exactly what is we don’t know! It could be something completely innocuous — or it could be something really important!

These recent changes just add to the long, long list.