🔧 Accounting Deadline Alerts Automations
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Description
🎯 Accounting Alerts Automation
Purpose: Automatically track Companies House filing deadlines for UK accounting firms and prevent costly penalties (£150-£1,500 per missed deadline).
How it works:
- Daily automated checks pull live deadline data from Companies House API
- Color-coded email alerts (Red/Orange/Yellow/Green) prioritize urgent deadlines
- Interactive “Yes/No” buttons let recipients confirm completion status
- All data syncs back to Google Sheets for complete audit trail
Value: Saves 2-3 hours/week per firm while eliminating manual tracking errors.
⚙️ Daily Deadline Check & Alert System
Runs: Every weekday at 5 PM (Mon-Fri)
What happens:
- Read Company Database - Fetches all tracked companies from Google Sheets
- Get Company Data - Pulls live filing deadlines from Companies House API for each company
- Update Due Dates - Syncs latest deadline data back to the tracking sheet
- Build Interactive Email - Creates HTML email with:
- Color-coded urgency indicators (days remaining)
- Sortable table by due date
- Clickable Yes/No confirmation buttons for each company
- Send via Gmail - Delivers consolidated report to accounting team
Why automated: Manual deadline checking across 10-50+ companies is time-consuming and error-prone. This ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
✅ Email Response Handler (Webhook Flow)
Triggered when: Recipient clicks “Yes” or “No” button in the alert email
What happens:
- Webhook - Receives confirmation status (company_number, company_name, yes/no)
- Process Data - Extracts response details from the webhook payload
- Update Sheet - Records confirmation status in Google Sheets with timestamp
- Confirmation Page - Displays success message to user
Why this matters: Provides instant feedback to the user and creates an audit trail of who confirmed what and when. No separate tracking system needed—everything updates automatically in the same spreadsheet.
Result: Accountability without administrative burden.
📋 Setup Requirements
Google Sheets Database Structure: Create a sheet with these columns:
- company_number (manually entered)
- company_name (manually entered)
- accounts_due (auto-updated)
- confirmation_due (auto-updated)
- confirmation_submitted (updated via email clicks)
- last_updated (auto-timestamp)
Required Credentials:
- Google Sheets OAuth (for reading/writing data)
- Companies House API key (free from api.company-information.service.gov.uk)
- Gmail OAuth (for sending alerts)
Webhook Configuration: Update webhook URL in “Build Interactive Email” node to match your n8n instance.
Time to Setup: ~15 minutes once credentials are configured.
🔗 Nodes Used
Google Sheets, HTTP Request, Webhook, Gmail, Schedule Trigger
📥 Import
Download workflow.json and import into n8n:
Workflow menu → Import from File