Track Companies House Filing Deadlines with Google Sheets, Gmail & Interactive Alerts

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.