🔧 Accounting Deadline Alerts Automations
⚡ 201 views · 🔧 Miscellaneous
Description
Quick overview
This is the free DIY version of Deadline Autopilot: Automatically track Companies House filing deadlines for every client in your UK accounting practice. Daily API checks, colour-coded email alerts, and Google Sheets audit trail — so no filing ever slips. https://ihsanops.ai/deadline-management
How it works
- A schedule trigger runs the workflow automatically every weekday at 5 PM, so deadline checks happen without anyone remembering to run them.
- The workflow reads your full client list from Google Sheets, then queries the Companies House API for each company to pull its live accounts and confirmation-statement filing deadlines.
- Latest deadline dates are written straight back to the tracking sheet, keeping your single source of truth current.
- An HTML email is built with colour-coded urgency (Red/Orange/Yellow/Green by days remaining), a table sortable by due date, and a Yes/No confirmation button per company, then sent to your team via Gmail.
- When a recipient clicks Yes or No, a webhook records that response and a timestamp back into Google Sheets and shows a confirmation page — giving you a full audit trail of who confirmed what and when.
Setup
- Create a Google Sheet with these columns: company_number, company_name, accounts_due, confirmation_due, confirmation_submitted, last_updated. Manually enter company_number and company_name for each client; the rest auto-populate.
- Get a free Companies House API key from api.company-information.service.gov.uk and add it as a credential in n8n.
- Connect your Google Sheets OAuth (read/write) and Gmail OAuth (sending) credentials.
- Open the Build Interactive Email node and update the webhook URL to match your own n8n instance.
- Activate the workflow. The daily check now runs Monday to Friday at 5 PM. Total setup time is roughly 15 minutes once credentials are ready.
Requirements
- Companies House API key (free from api.company-information.service.gov.uk)
- Google Sheets OAuth credential (read/write access)
- Gmail OAuth credential (for sending alerts)
- A Google Sheet with the columns listed in Setup
Customization
- Change the run schedule in the trigger node (e.g. a morning send instead of 5 PM)
- Adjust the colour-coding thresholds to match how far ahead your practice likes to work
- Swap Gmail for Outlook or SMTP, or route alerts to Slack instead of email
- Extend the sheet to track additional filing types beyond accounts and confirmation statements
Additional info
Saves 2–3 hours per week per firm and eliminates manual tracking errors across 10–50+ companies — no filing falls through the cracks. Built by Ali Amin, founder of Ihsan Ops, practical automation for UK accounting practices and SMEs. Want it installed and tuned for your firm, or a custom workflow built? ihsanops.ai — Less admin. More growth.
🔗 Nodes Used
Google Sheets, HTTP Request, Webhook, Gmail, Schedule Trigger
📥 Import
Download workflow.json and import into n8n:
Workflow menu → Import from File