UK SME Balance Sheets and Filing Behaviour

First tagged release of aggregate balance sheet and filing behaviour figures computed from 366,209 XBRL accounts filed at Companies House. What is in this release uk_sme_balance_sheets_by_size.csv - net assets, cash, debtors, creditors and asset split by employee band, with quartiles uk_current_ratio_by_size.csv - current ratio quartiles and share below 1.0 uk_working_capital_composition_by_size.csv - cash and debtors as shares of current assets uk_filing_timeliness_by_size.csv - days to file and lateness by employee band uk_filing_timeliness_by_balance_sheet_position.csv - filing behaviour split by positive and negative net assets Headline findings Negative net assets fall from 21.4% at zero employees to 9.7% at 50 to 249 employees The median UK current ratio is 1.27, not the 2:1 that standard guidance quotes. Nearly half of zero-employee companies sit below 1.0 Cash falls from 63.1% of current assets at one employee to 23.7% at 50 or more, with debtors taking its place Companies with negative net assets are 75% more likely to file more than a year after their balance sheet date Method and limitations Restricted to balance sheet dates from 1 January 2025, so this is a cross-section rather than a time series. Medians and quartiles throughout, because the distribution is heavily skewed. Negative net assets is a balance sheet observation, not a judgement about solvency. An overdrawn director's loan account is a common and benign cause. Full method, caveats and per-field sample counts in the README. Licence CC BY 4.0. The underlying filings are public data published by Companies House under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Compiled by Peter Edwards ACMA CGMA, Finance Clearly.