Dividend Vouchers Without Accounting Software

Not every UK limited company runs on Xero or QuickBooks. Plenty keep their accounts in a spreadsheet, in a package with no integration, or with an accountant who handles the books elsewhere.
The dividend paperwork is still required. A voucher for each payment, minutes recording the decision, and a declaration or resolution — whether or not any software posted the transaction.

This guide explains:

• who documents-only mode is for
• what Dividendly produces without an accounting connection
• what you give up by not connecting, and how to connect later if you change your mind

Who this is for

• Directors whose accounts live in a spreadsheet or a package Dividendly doesn't connect to.
• Companies whose accountant runs the books and just needs the dividend documents to file.
• Accountants with a mixed client book — some on Xero, some on QuickBooks, some on neither — who want one process for all of them.
• Anyone who wants the paperwork done properly now and will sort out integrations later.

Setting up: company details, once

Pick Documents only when you create a company in Dividendly. Then:

1. Look up the company on Companies House. Name, registration number, registered office and financial-year end are prefilled from the official record — you don't type them.
2. Add your shareholders and their shareholdings. They stay on file, so per-share amounts are worked out for you on every dividend.
3. Set your document defaults: whether to produce board minutes and a declaration or resolution alongside each voucher, and whether to print a company header and footer on the PDFs.

That is the whole setup. Nothing else to connect.

What gets produced

For each dividend, Dividendly drafts:

• A dividend voucher for every shareholder, carrying the fields GOV.UK requires — payment date, company name, shareholder and amount — plus the good-practice extras: company number, registered office, number and class of shares, dividend per share, tax year, financial period and a unique reference. See what is a dividend voucher for which is which, and HMRC's guidance on tax on dividends.
• Board minutes recording the directors' decision to pay.
• A dividend declaration for an interim dividend, or a shareholder resolution for a final dividend.

You preview the PDFs before anything is issued.

Signing and sending

Each run includes an e-signature acknowledgement step, so the minutes and resolution are signed rather than left as blank templates. Once signed, Dividendly emails each shareholder their voucher and documents, and everything is kept in voucher history for download later.

Recurring dividends

If you pay on a schedule — monthly, quarterly — set it up once and Dividendly prepares each run for you. Shareholdings and document defaults carry across, so a regular dividend is a review-and-issue job rather than a start-from-scratch one.

What you don't get without a connection

Two things need a connected Xero or QuickBooks account:

• Posting and attachments in your books. Connected companies have the payment posted (a SPEND transaction in Xero, a Purchase in QuickBooks) with the voucher PDF attached to it. In documents-only mode, the PDFs live in Dividendly's voucher history and your inbox; you record the payment in your own accounts as you do today.
• Historical back-fill. Reading past dividend transactions and drafting vouchers for them retroactively works from Xero or QuickBooks data. Without a provider, older dividends are entered as manual vouchers instead.

Everything else — vouchers, minutes, resolutions, e-signature, email, schedules, multi-company — is the same in every mode. Plan limits apply identically whether or not you connect.

Connecting later

Documents-only is not a dead end. When you move to Xero or QuickBooks, connect it from inside the company: your company details, shareholders, document defaults and voucher history all stay put. Future dividends post to your books; past ones are untouched. There is nothing to redo.

One provider per company at a time — switching from one to the other means disconnecting first.

Security and data handling

Voucher PDFs are stored privately and served only through short-lived signed links. Access is default-deny and scoped to your company. (If you do connect a provider later, its tokens are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM.) Details are on the security page.

Final take

Proper dividend paperwork doesn't depend on which accounting software you use — or whether you use any. Enter the company once, keep the shareholders on file, and each dividend goes out with a voucher, minutes and a resolution, signed and emailed.

Documents-only mode is included on every plan. See the features page for the full workflow. If you decide to connect, the QuickBooks Online integration guide and the Xero integration guide cover each in full, and the shorter QuickBooks and Xero walkthroughs cover setup step by step.