Before cessation of a limited company can begin, there is a three-month window to establish cessation of trade, then it takes around three months to prepare cessation accounts. There may also be other activity that can take extra time to complete.
After the initial three-month period has passed – to ensure that all financial and other activity has completely finished – the preparation of the cessation accounts can begin. This process usually takes another three months or so, however, there are many activities which could require further work in the limited company to finalise things, which will therefore extend the time to complete. This extra work can include waiting for HMRC to process refunds to the company for overpaid liabilities or reconciliations that require further work to confirm your financial statements are correctly stated.