LtdRecord vs dividend voucher templates vs accounting software: which do you need?

You are about to pay a dividend, so you owe the company two small things: a minute recording the decision, and a voucher for each shareholder. The money moves in seconds; the paperwork is a minute’s work — if you know what you’re producing. There are three honest ways to get there: a free template, the accounting software you may already run, and a tool like LtdRecord built for company records. This guide compares them fairly, without pretending one size fits all. Some readers will finish it and rightly decide a template is all they need.

What the paperwork has to achieve, whichever route you take

Every route has to land the same result. A dividend needs a board decision recorded in a minute and a voucher for each shareholder; it can only be paid out of distributable profits; and the minutes have to be kept for at least ten years. That’s the bar — the three options below just differ in how much of it they carry for you. For the full rules (when you can pay, what each document must say, and the traps), see our companion guide on dividend paperwork for a UK limited company.

Route one — the free template

The obvious starting point when you search for a “dividend voucher template”. It’s free, it’s instant, and for a competent director paying a one-off dividend it is genuinely fine. Fill in the blanks, print it, done.

The honest weaknesses show up over time rather than on the day:

• A template is usually the voucher alone. The board minute — the actual legal decision — is routinely forgotten, because nobody handed you one.
• Nothing checks there are profits to pay the dividend from; the template will happily fill in either way.
• Blank fields invite errors — a wrong share class, a missing number, a date that drifts.
• The finished file ends up unnumbered in a Downloads folder, divorced from any supporting evidence.
• Nothing reminds you it exists — six years from now it’s just a stray PDF you have to remember to look for.

When it’s the right answer: you know exactly what documents you need, you pair the minute with the voucher yourself, and you file them somewhere you’ll still find. If that’s you, a template is a perfectly good choice and you can stop reading here.

Route two — your accounting software

If you already run bookkeeping, VAT or payroll in an accounting package, some of the work is already sitting there. The profit figure that decides whether you can pay lives in the same system, and some packages can produce dividend documentation directly.

The honest weakness is one of design. These tools are built around the ledger — bookkeeping, bank feeds, VAT returns — not around company-secretarial records. Minutes, resolutions and the story behind a particular transaction are, at best, a side feature. The typical output is an entry, not a filed, signed record pack with the evidence attached. Whether your package produces a full voucher at all varies from one to the next.

When it’s the right answer: your accountant already drives the software and generates the dividend paperwork for you as part of their service. If someone else is producing a proper minute and voucher on your behalf, there’s nothing to fix — stay where you are.

Route three — LtdRecord

LtdRecord is built for the company-records side specifically. You describe the dividend in one plain-English sentence — “Paid myself a £1,500 dividend today” — and it prepares the full record pack for that decision: a board minute and a dividend voucher, paired, numbered and signed, with an evidence checklist attached. On a multi-director board, each director can co-sign in their own hand. Records are stored encrypted and can be exported at any time as a PDF or ZIP, the built-in company-secretary radar helps you track deadline and follow-up reminders, and your accountant can be linked read-only to review. The first record pack is free with no card; paid plans start at £9.99/month (see pricing).

One limit stated plainly: LtdRecord is not accounting software. It does not do bookkeeping, bank feeds, VAT or payroll, and it does not file anything with Companies House or HMRC. It handles the minutes, vouchers, evidence and deadlines — not your accounts. Many people run it alongside their accounting software, not instead of it.

Side-by-side

So which do you need?

Three honest verdicts:

• A one-off, and you’re confident — use a template. Just pair the board minute with the voucher yourself, and file both somewhere durable.
• Your accountant handles everything in their software — stay there. If they’re producing the minute and voucher for you, it’s already done.
• You run your own company paperwork and want the decision, the voucher, the evidence and the deadlines together in one numbered place — that’s what LtdRecord is for.

Whichever route you take, the test is the same. Could you put your hand on the minute, the voucher and the supporting evidence — together, and clearly the right ones — six years from now? If yes, you’ve chosen well. If the honest answer is “probably not”, that’s the gap to close, and it’s the same gap our guide on how long to keep limited company records is really about.