Hello, I have been trying to map Documents filing type with description but have not found a source that has an accurate mapping. Also, while doing it manually, I have uncovered many legacy filing types and/or legacy descriptions.
Is there any updated mapping?
A bit of context: I am trying to map ‘filing types’ to my own categories:
Does this link help? Document Codes and Descriptions.
Also, please take a look at the codes and categories used by the company filing history stream.
Streaming API: Company filing history stream
:
Hello! Yes - I have, but unfortunately, there are many legacy filing types which are not covered by the provided link, and other ones that I have found.
Hence, I was asking if anyone had consolidated all the different found types into a document or any other source.
Thank you for posting this question - I found that there was a Companies House answer here which I suspect doesn’t exactly answer your question (but may be part of it?) but I had missed!
This was “what is the full list of Filing History categories and subcategories”.
The question has been asked before e.g.
An answer is given by Companies House in this thread:
Companies House also said “If anyone requires a full list of mappings of documents to categories, I have had the OK to give it out.”
I don’t know if that helps you however?
Following the last post - I’m not quite clear what you’re trying to do. It seems it could be one or more of the following tasks:
Work out what
( filingHistoryList item ) category fields every ( filingHistoryList item ) description is associated with. (There are several places in the filingHistoryList item with a description field - and this field is actually an identifier which can be used to look up the full text in the “enum constants”)
Work out what ( filingHistoryList item ) type is associated with which ( filingHistoryList item ) description. (The type fields are the internal Companies House names for e.g. forms used for filing. I am not sure this is still the case and I may be misremembering, but at some point I think there were description values of “legacy” and that meant the type was all you had to work with!)
“What is the complete list of the type field?” has been previously asked but not answered:
I think all the description values should be in the enum constants. If not, do you have any examples?
Also - the type values should mostly be covered by the first link @SmokeAndMirrors posted. There are of course the actual (current) forms online as well where you can check the form code (type) and meaning. I suppose it’s possible there are indeed truly legacy values - again, could you post any examples?
I am trying to map out every filling type for Incorporation/registration events and for articles/memorandums/etc events. Is there any type that I am missing below? This is basically a collection of unique filing types that I have found through different sources:
Incorporation:
| Filing Type | Description |
|---|---|
| NEWINC | New incorporation documents |
| IN01 | Application for registration of a company |
| IN01c | Application for registration of a company (Welsh language form) |
Articles:
| Filing Type | Description |
|---|---|
| ART | Articles of Association |
*if company doesn’t have any of the other filling types and if it mentions model articles.
We did something similar in the past under the XML Gateway.
Depending on your data source (e.g. following applies for filing history lists or streaming API) can you not just use the category field though e.g. for “incorporation” (e.g. “starting” / “registering in the UK”) the value:
incorporation
… should cover both incorporation and articles? (Unless the filing is really old / obscure / Companies House has otherwise not categorised it “correctly” - although since they are the official “source of truth” ultimately it is up to them!)
One of our use-cases was identifying certain key filings - so in this case we actually were happy to try to limit the search so we only got the “main” filing (and not e.g. resolutions or associated filings) and only fell back on the more obscure things if the “usual” documents were not there.
We do have more general uses though so do need to support the detail. So we still have some routines which check this (if e.g. description is missing or empty) because of our legacy use of the XML Gateway and “just in case”…
I’m still not sure why you would need to worry about the type since Companies House clearly want people to avail themselves of their new description codes here. However - I don’t need to know of course! 
In your case I can’t say exactly how you might decide to categorise something - that depends on the question(s) you want to answer. So in our old list we had some but not all of the forms your listed, and also others you didn’t mention.
For incorporation you might then also note:
NCIN01 Application by a joint stock company for registration as a public company under the Companies Act 2006
Possibly: NCIN03 Application by a company (not being a joint stock company) for registration under the Companies Act 2006
Then there’s … NCIN04 Statement by Director or Secretary on application by a joint stock company for registration as a public company under the Companies Act 2006
Again - I don’t know for sure but I suspect @SmokeAndMirrors first list covers most things.
Hi - Answering your question on why: I would like to be able to capture the incorporation document (unique) and the current articles (latest ones). The goal is not to display all documentation, but rather those two documents only, while being correctly labeled.
What is the disadvantage of using the field filing type rather than description?
Just read through all this with interest.
We process filing history based on form type rather than Companies House categories due to specialist needs. This has resulted in a rather large database of form types and rules/filters that is the ongoing result of a couple of decades of manually classifying forms.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an authoratative list of form types or if one is available. As such it’s just a manual process, if we encounter a new form, we check the description in the enumerations, or download the actual document, before deciding how we should classify it (for our needs) and adding it to our database/filter.
Obviously doing this from scratch is a daunting task, but unless CH’s categories are sufficient for your needs, I think it’s the only way to do it. Essentially what you have done so far with regards to curating your own list… then manually investiging if, for example, you encounter a company that doesn’t have any formation documents: manually checking the filing history to see if there is something there you need to add to the list.
It amused me that our database references over 1200 distinct form codes and yet the NCIN0X forms @voracityemail mentioned aren’t on it! This means that over 20 years (well, technically less as they’re CA2006 forms) and millions of interactions with a company’s filling history (through CHD, XML or the API) we have literally never encountered these particular forms. Part of that may be industry/sector specific as we don’t deal with public companies very often.
I don’t know.
The description values are a newer thing (because they seem to have appeared with the new REST API). The REST API seems to be designed to use the category and description fields - so I assume it makes sense (since they’ve developed these after the filing types) to use them!
For many uses it just appears simpler - if you can use a Companies House category then why not? Since they’re the authority, for many use-cases it would be most appropriate to just use their groupings of data.
In your own case unless you have a special reason like @ash (which could just be to maintain compatibility with your own existing systems) I’d be tempted to filter on the incorporation category (possibly adding in the change-of-constitution category if you want to capture changes to the articles etc.) and then just build up a list of description values you’re interested in. The list is here - 1117 items currently!
(However as @ash says it may be that this doesn’t entirely cover all the filings particularly older historical ones. Or possibly they’ve simply categorised all the historical types into a reduced list of descriptions?)
That would probably be a collection including the ‘registration-of-uk-establishment’, various ‘register-’ ones, ‘incorporation-’ ones, ‘memorandum-articles’, model-articles-’ ones, but there are a whole collection which you may or may not wish to put into your categories such as re-registrations, formations and conversions of SEs, amendment of statutes, registration as particular types of company (e.g. PFLP)…
Swings and roundabouts. Either way, as @ash says this is a job for yourself of keeping on top of the zoo of different filings out there and deciding which ones you want to put in your own categories. If you don’t want to just adopt the Companies House categories only you can tell what you are interested in grouping together.
Unfortunately as much as I enjoy chatting about this stuff, I can only really do so from a technical point of view and more specific stuff is outside of what I’m allowed to discuss!