How Philofounder works

Signing in

There is no password. Enter your email on the sign-in page and we send a single-use link from login@philofounder.co.uk; click it and you are in. The link expires shortly and works once. If you asked for several links in an hour you may be asked to wait; that limit stops the form being used to flood an inbox.

The first time your workspace holds anything private (a real company, a connection, a filed document, or a second person) we ask you to add a second sign-in step: a passkey (your phone, laptop or security key) or an authenticator app. It takes about a minute. From then on, signing in on a new device asks for it, and so do the sensitive actions described in this guide. You can see every signed-in device, and sign any of them out, under Settings.

Setting up your company

Type the company name or number. We search Companies House and show the matches; choose yours and we pull the public record: status, incorporation date, accounting reference date, registered office, SIC codes, directors and people with significant control. Every field shows its source. You confirm what is right, correct anything that is not, and add the few things the register does not know: the day you started trading (which sets your first HMRC deadline), whether you have already told HMRC, and your website. Your brand colours can be set here or later.

Until you have added a company, the app shows a fictional one so you can look around. It is marked as demo data in the sidebar and disappears the moment your real company is set up.

The Heartbeat is the page you land on. It answers one question: does anything need me? At the top is your company’s standing (on track, a few things coming up, or action needed), then the deadlines in date order, what Philo has noticed since you last looked, and the state of your connections.

Philo checks every workspace each morning, and you can press Check now at any time. A check reads the Companies House record, scans the connected mailbox for finance and official mail, refreshes bank statements, surveys your website for changes, and evaluates every deadline rule. What it finds appears as a notice with a severity. Reminders arrive at 30, 14, 7, 3 and 1 days before each date, and the last three are also emailed to the owner and members, as is a notice that turns critical; and on Mondays a short summary of what was filed and noticed goes to anyone who has it switched on in Settings.

Dismissing a notice marks it with the time; it is not deleted, so the record stays whole.

Philo is the assistant. Ask in plain English: when is our confirmation statement due, who are our PSCs, what did we spend with a supplier last quarter, what does this letter from HMRC mean, what should I do next. Philo answers from your own record, through a fixed set of read-only tools, and shows the source it used: the deadline rule and its legislation, the filed document, the purchase, the bank line, the Drive folder.

Philo can also draft: a reply to an official letter or email, minutes of a meeting, a letter on your letterhead, a document from a template. Every draft lands in the relevant register for you to edit, approve or discard. Philo has two actions of its own, and both ask you to confirm before anything happens: marking a drafted document as final and archiving it in the cabinet, and recording that you have submitted a filing, with the reference. It has no tool that files with a registry, sends an email, pays anything or deletes a record.

Past conversations are kept per workspace so you can pick one up again. If Philo cannot find something in the record it says so rather than guessing.

Deadlines lists every statutory date we can work out for a company registered at Companies House: the confirmation statement, annual accounts (including the first, longer period after incorporation, which is split into two corporation tax periods where the law requires it), corporation tax payment (nine months and one day after the period end) and the CT600 return (twelve months), and the notice to HMRC that the company has started trading. Each row shows the date, how far away it is, the rule that produced it and the legislation or guidance it cites. Mark a deadline done when you have filed. VAT obligations will be read from HMRC on the Money page once HMRC grants this software production access; until then the HMRC connection runs against HMRC’s test service and is marked as such.

Actions from board minutes with a due date appear here too, so the promise made in a meeting is tracked with the statutory dates.

Compliance shows the company’s standing as a score (how many of the checks pass), the next reminders, and the statutory registers a company must keep: members, directors, and people with significant control, drawn from your record. The register of members itself, with the check of PSCs against Companies House, lives on the Equity page.

Filings holds a runbook for each filing, starting with the confirmation statement (CS01). A runbook rehearses the real thing screen by screen: what to check before you start (identity verification, the registered email address, the office, officers, SIC codes, the statement of capital, shareholders), the fee, and the declarations. Walk it before the day so the filing itself is mechanical. The submission is made by you on the Companies House service, not by Philofounder.

Documents is the filing cabinet. Files arrive three ways: you upload them, Philo files them from your connected mailbox, or you bring them in from Google Drive. Each file is checked for what it really is (not only its name), given a category, a title, a date and a source, and linked to the company.

Every sorting decision comes with its reason. When mail is filed, the entry carries a reason and a confidence (“VAT return acknowledgement from HMRC, 92%”). Anything Philo is not sure about waits in a review queue for you to confirm, re-file or skip; what you decide teaches the rules for your workspace only. Sign-in links, security alerts and marketing are recognised and left alone.

With Google Drive connected, every confirmed document can be sent to the folder you have mapped for its category, one at a time or all at once, and you can switch on automatic filing so a document goes to Drive when it is confirmed. A document already on Drive is never sent twice. Philofounder never deletes or moves anything on your Drive.

Connect Gmail or Microsoft 365 and Philofounder reads your mailbox, read-only, to find invoices, receipts, subscriptions and official mail from HMRC and Companies House. It files what it finds into the cabinet with the reason described above, keeps a note of what it has already seen so nothing is filed twice, and reads the dates on official mail so a deadline stated in a letter reaches your Deadlines page.

When something needs a reply, Philo drafts one into the Letters register from the filed message and your instruction. You send it yourself from your own mailbox: for Gmail, a button opens the reply ready to send. Philofounder never sends a reply for you.

Meetings holds everything about the company’s meetings: scheduling, agendas, transcripts and the minute book. In the minute book, record a board meeting, a general meeting or a written resolution with the date, who attended and who sent apologies, whether the meeting was quorate, the chair and minute taker, and numbered resolutions with their outcome. Each entry is numbered per company by date (for example BM-2026-03 for the third board meeting of 2026). Actions with an owner and a date feed the Deadlines page.

An entry moves from draft to circulated to ratified; a ratified record is frozen. Minutes can be exported, and existing minutes and agendas can be imported from text so the book is complete from the start.

An owner or member can schedule a meeting in the minute book as a Microsoft Teams meeting. This needs Microsoft 365 connected for calendars on the Connections page, with its own consent. Your Microsoft 365 administrator may need to approve it once, and the organiser’s account must be licensed for Teams. You check the details, then press Send, and the invitations go from the organiser’s own calendar. Repeating meetings, rescheduling and cancelling work the same way.

Invited members get a reminder email from Philofounder the day before and an hour before, which they can switch off. Joining with the Join button on the Heartbeat records that you attended, for the minutes, and then opens Teams. Board and general meetings are set to be transcribed by default, and the invitation says so; someone in the meeting still starts the transcript in Teams.

Bringing the attendance report and the transcript back afterwards is a separate choice. A Microsoft 365 administrator approves two further read-only permissions, and the owner switches it on. Philofounder then files them to the minute book against the meeting. A transcript goes to a model only if the owner has separately agreed to Philo drafting minutes from it.

Time is where owners and members log the hours they choose to: a timer, a quick add, today’s entries and your tasks, each with a Start button. Philofounder records only the time you log, with no screenshots, activity or location. Meetings you attended are offered so you can log them in one step. An accountant can read but not log, and nobody logs time for someone else.

In the week view you submit your week, take it back if you need to, and download it as PDF or CSV. Where approval is switched on, an owner approves each week, and another owner approves an owner’s own week where there is one. An approved week is locked, and can be filed to Documents and to your Drive timesheets folder, or sent for signature.

The team board is for owners: who is doing what, the team’s week, weeks waiting for approval, exports, and the settings. Hours can be private (you and the owners see yours; the team sees totals) or open to every member. Owners also choose whether weeks need approval, whether members may assign tasks, whether email reminders go out and which day the week starts. Follow-ups from the minutes can be sent as tasks, and each person is emailed their list. Owners can produce contribution statements, which record time; what that time is worth in pay or shares is for the board and members to decide.

Letters is the register of formal correspondence, numbered by year (L-2026-004). It starts with an address book seeded with HMRC and Companies House. Philo drafts a letter from the company record and the letter being answered (a filed PDF, or pasted text), on your letterhead from the Brand page, with the reference, salutation and closing done for you. You revise it, and every version is kept. A finished letter is frozen and can be exported as PDF, Word or Markdown. You send it; the product does not.

Generate produces documents from templates using what the product already knows about the company and you: board meeting minutes, a letter to an adviser, a company one-pager, a director’s loan agreement, a mutual NDA, a contractor agreement, a sales invoice, a privacy policy, a Start-Up Loan business plan, a cash-flow forecast, a data protection impact assessment and an employment contract. Drafts are saved and can be edited or deleted. A generated document is a starting point for you or your adviser, not legal advice.

Sign sends a PDF from Documents for signature to up to six people, inside or outside the company, all at once or in a set order. Owners and members can send. Approved minutes and approved timesheets can be sent with the signers already filled in.

Each signer gets an email from Philofounder with their own link, which lasts 30 days; no account is needed. Someone outside the company confirms their email with a six-digit code, and a member can confirm with their own sign-in and second step instead. Signers type or draw a signature and tick a consent box, or decline. You can send a fresh link or cancel a request; there are no automatic reminders.

When everyone has signed, the PDF gains a signatures page and a certificate of signature, and is sealed with Philofounder’s own digital seal (not one issued by a certificate authority), with a timestamp when the timestamp service answers. The signed copy is emailed to every signer and the sender, and filed to Documents and to your Drive folder for signed documents. Anyone can check a copy on the public verify page. This is an electronic signature, not a witnessed deed: deeds still need wet ink and a witness.

Purchases is the register of what the company has bought, with the evidence attached. A receipt or invoice in the cabinet becomes a purchase: supplier, date, net, VAT and gross, and the document that proves it. Purchases are grouped by VAT quarter and can be exported as CSV, with the evidence, for your accountant. Purchases with no matching bank line, and bank payments from the last 90 days with no purchase, wait on the page so the gap is visible: start a purchase from a payment and attach the receipt, or set it aside if it is not a purchase. A supplier you have bought from before keeps the category you last gave it.

With a bank connected through Open Banking, transactions are read (read-only), matched to purchases, and filed as monthly statements. An invoice in dollars or euros is matched to the sterling charge on the bank line and kept at that settled value, so totals and exports are in sterling. Open Banking consent lasts 90 days: the Connections page shows when it ends, and the Heartbeat warns you at 14 and 3 days. Bank connections are in testing with our own companies today and open to customers once our arrangement with TrueLayer, the regulated Open Banking provider, is in place.

Money shows the director’s loan account, kept as you go from the bank lines that are payments between you and the company (each one is offered, never assumed), tax and cash planning, and, once HMRC grants production access and you connect it, your VAT position: obligations, liabilities and payments, read through Making Tax Digital. With FreeAgent connected, the ledger page shows company facts, bank balances, open bills and invoices and VAT returns from your books, read-only, so the purchase register and the books can be checked against each other.

Equity is the register of members. Record share classes, members, allotments and transfers, and the product produces the cap table by shares and by votes and the statement of capital. People with significant control are checked against Companies House, SH01 deadlines are raised after an allotment, and a stamp duty note appears on transfers that need it. A SEIS/EIS view helps you see where a raise would sit.

Products is where you tell Philo what the company makes or sells and whether each product is live or in development, so it can flag the obligations each one carries (data protection, payments, consumer rights, licensing). Brand holds your logo and colours, which go on every document, letter and export. Profile is you: your background and CV, and, in a company with more than one director, which director you are, which the Money page and generated documents rely on.

Connections is one page for everything the product reads, what each one reads, when consent ends, and a disconnect for each. Every connection asks for its own consent at the provider, with only the access it needs. Disconnecting deletes the tokens we hold and revokes our access at the provider where the provider offers revocation (Google does); where it does not, the page tells you the one step to remove Philofounder in that provider’s own settings. Only the owner can disconnect.

• Companies House: live for every company with no setup. Read on every check.
• Gmail and Microsoft 365: read-only. Used to file finance and official mail. We do not ask for permission to send.
• Open Banking: read-only access to transactions and balances through TrueLayer, a regulated provider, with a 90-day consent that you renew from this page. In testing with our own companies today; open to customers once our arrangement with TrueLayer is in place.
• HMRC: your VAT obligations, liabilities and payments through Making Tax Digital, read-only. Built and tested against HMRC’s test service; open to customers when HMRC grants production access, and marked as in testing until then.
• Google Drive: only the folders and files you choose. We ask for the narrowest Drive permission Google offers, which cannot see the rest of your Drive. Choose existing folders and we suggest which category each one holds, or let us create a standard, numbered set. Never deletes.
• FreeAgent: your ledger, read-only. Nothing is posted to FreeAgent.
• Your website: a read-only survey to keep the company profile current and to notice when the site changes.

Xero and QuickBooks, OneDrive and SharePoint, calendar reminders and payroll are listed as coming, and stay marked that way until they are finished. Philofounder is not HMRC recognised software and does not claim to be.

A workspace has three roles. The owner is the founder: full control, including the team, connections, export and deletion. A member is a trusted teammate who can edit and act but cannot manage the team or connections. An accountant reads and collaborates: the same cabinet, purchases, deadlines and minutes, with no power to change company data or trigger an action, which keeps a clear line between advice and the founder’s own filings.

The owner invites by email with a role; an invitation lasts 14 days and can be resent or cancelled. A role can be changed in place without re-inviting. Anyone can leave a workspace. Inviting someone and removing them are sensitive actions and ask for your second sign-in step.

One account can belong to several workspaces (your own company and a client’s, say) and a workspace can hold several companies, each with its own records, connections and team. The switcher in the sidebar moves between them.

Activity is the log: every action by every person and by Philo, labelled in plain English and grouped by day, with a filter for Philo’s own actions and one for yours. The log is append-only at the database level; nothing in it can be edited or removed, including by us, until the owner deletes the whole workspace.

Settings holds the workspace name and plan, the companies in it (archive one without losing anything, restore it, or permanently delete it), notifications (the Monday summary and critical notices), and security: your passkeys and authenticator app, recovery codes, the devices signed in, and personal access tokens for connecting your own tools to the product’s API, each bound to you and one workspace, shown once, and stop working as soon as you leave the workspace.

Under Your data, the owner can export everything the workspace holds as JSON at any time, and can permanently delete the workspace. Deletion asks for the second step, and then it is final. Files and connection tokens are removed, every connection is disconnected as described above, and the audit log is erased with the rest.

Passwordless sign-in with a second step, encryption at rest for files and tokens, strict separation between workspaces that is tested in our build before every release, an audit log that cannot be edited, read-only connections by default, and a published way to report a problem. The security page describes our vulnerability disclosure policy, and the privacy policy names every provider we use and what it receives.

Email hello@philofounder.co.uk for anything about your account or the product. For a security concern, email security@grandpoint.uk. If you receive an email claiming to be from us that asks for anything more than clicking your sign-in link, do not act on it; forward it to us and we will look into it.

Philofounder is a service of GRANDPOINT LTD, company number 16498233, registered in England and Wales. It is not a substitute for an accountant or a solicitor; where the guide says a document is a starting point, that is what it is.