Business Letter Format: What Company Paper Must Carry

The parts of a business letter, in order

Letterhead, reference lines, date, the recipient name and address, salutation, subject line, body, close, signature block, and the notations at the foot. Full block sets all of them flush left and is the easiest order to hold in a company template. Modified block moves the date, close and signature towards the centre and reads as the more traditional choice, which is why it is still common in correspondence. Semi-block indents the paragraphs and is now rare. Our formal letter formats page sets out the three layouts with the indents and margins.

The rest of this page is what the layout guides leave out: the details the law puts on the page, the reference lines that let somebody find the letter two years later, who is allowed to sign it, and the notations at the bottom that decide who else sees it. Where the letter is a complaint or a reply to one, the supplier complaint guide covers the argument itself.

Business letter format starts with the letterhead, not the layout

A company letter carries statutory information in most jurisdictions, and a designer who trims the footer to make the page look cleaner can put the company in breach.

• United Kingdom. Under the Companies Act 2006 and the 2015 trading disclosure regulations, a company's business letters must state the registered name, the registration number, the part of the United Kingdom in which the company is registered, and the address of the registered office. An LLP carries the equivalent. The disclosure has to be legible to the naked eye, so a grey four-point footer does not satisfy it. Getting it wrong is a criminal offence committed by the company and by every officer in default, a shadow director included, punishable on summary conviction by a fine of up to level 3 on the standard scale, currently 1,000 pounds in England and Wales, plus a further daily fine for as long as the breach continues.
• The commercial sting nobody mentions. Section 83 of the Companies Act 2006 lets a court dismiss a claim the company itself brings on a contract made while it was in breach of those rules, where the other side shows it lost a counterclaim or suffered financial loss because of the breach, unless the court thinks it just and equitable to let the case continue. A trimmed footer can cost you the debt you are suing for.
• The trap in the same UK rule. If a UK company's business letter names any director other than in the body text or as the signatory, it must then name every director. A letterhead listing three founders because they liked the look of it obliges the company to list the whole board. Do not carry the rule abroad unchanged: two jurisdictions below run it the other way round and want every director named whether or not anyone is mentioned.
• India. Section 12 of the Companies Act 2013 has required, since April 2014, that business letters, billheads, letter paper, notices and other official publications carry the company name, the address of the registered office, the Corporate Identity Number, and the telephone number, with fax, email and website where they exist. A One Person Company prints the words One Person Company in brackets below its name, wherever that name is printed, affixed or engraved, so the marker belongs under the masthead and not beside the registered office. Default costs 1,000 rupees for every day it continues, capped at 100,000 rupees, payable by the company and by every officer in default.
• Nigeria. Section 729(1)(c) of the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020 puts the company name and the registration number, in legible characters, on business letters, notices, advertisements and other official publications. The registered office address is not on that list, which is where the Nigerian requirement parts company with the British one. Section 304 goes further than the UK on directors: trade circulars, show cards and business letters on which the company name appears, issued or sent to anyone in Nigeria, must name every director, whether or not any of them is mentioned in the text.
• Kenya and Ghana. Kenya asks the least of these, requiring the registered name in legible characters on the company's communication documents. Ghana asks for the name under section 125 of the Companies Act 2019 and, under section 186, for the names of the directors in trade circulars and business letters as well.
• United States. Incorporation is a state matter, so there is no federal company law and no federal rule on what a letterhead must carry; the constraint comes from the state, the regulator, or the profession. Federal law reaches the letter rather than the letterhead: a debt collector's correspondence has to carry prescribed disclosure wording, and commercial email has to show a valid physical postal address. Licensed practices, financial firms and healthcare providers pick up more from their own regulator.
• Not only companies. In the UK a sole trader or a partnership trading under anything other than the proprietors' own surnames must disclose, on business letters, written orders, invoices, receipts and demands for payment, the name of the individual or of every partner and a UK address at which documents can be served. Incorporating is not what triggers the duty.

Check what your own registration requires before you order paper or build the template. This page is general information rather than legal advice, and the details differ by jurisdiction and entity type.

Reference lines are for the person reading this in two years

"Our ref" and "Your ref" sit above or beside the date, and they are the only part of the letter written for the archive rather than the reader.

Your reference identifies the file on your side. A useful one encodes something a colleague can act on without asking you: a contract number, a claim number, the initials of the person handling it, the year. "Our ref: PT/4471/2026" tells a successor which contract, whose desk, and when. "Our ref: Letter 3" tells them nothing.

Their reference is whatever the other side asked you to quote, and quoting it correctly is the difference between the letter landing on the right desk and landing in a general inbox. When you are answering a letter that carried a reference, put it in yours, and put it in the subject line if the exchange has moved to email.

Where the letter forms part of a dispute or a contract process, the reference becomes the thread that a lawyer or an auditor follows. That is the moment the discipline pays for itself, and it is also the moment you cannot retrofit it.

Who signs, and on whose authority

A business letter binds the company or it does not, and the signature block is where that gets decided.

• Signing in your own name under your job title says you are acting for the company within your role. For routine correspondence this is the normal case and it needs nothing extra.
• "p.p." before a signature means one person signed on another's behalf, with that person's authority. Two orders are in circulation and the dictionaries disagree, because per procurationem reads as "through the agency of" while per pro reads as "for and on behalf of". The safe course is to remove the ambiguity rather than pick a side: sign your own name, write p.p. beside it, and print underneath both the name you signed for and your own with your role. Signing somebody else's name yourself is a different act and is worth avoiding.
• "For and on behalf of [company]" above the signature makes it explicit that the company, not you, is the contracting party. It records your intention; it is not a shield. Under section 51 of the Companies Act 2006, anyone who signs for a company that has not yet been incorporated is personally liable on the contract whatever the wording says, subject to agreement to the contrary. Check that the company exists and that you are authorised, and treat the phrase as a record of both rather than as protection.
• A letter that creates or ends an obligation should be signed by somebody whose authority to do it can be shown. Notice under a contract, a termination, a formal undertaking: check who is authorised before the letter goes out rather than after it is disputed.

The bottom of the letter decides who else sees it

Below the signature block, in this order, with a blank line before the group:

• Reference initials. The author's initials in capitals, the typist's in lower case, separated by a slash or colon. Largely a historical practice now, and still used where a team drafts and an assistant sends.
• Enclosure notation. "Enc." or "Enclosures (3)", flush left. Name each item rather than counting them where anything is contested, because a numbered list is how the recipient finds out something is missing. "Enc: signed agreement, schedule of works, invoice 4471" is checkable; "Enc (3)" is not.
• Copy notation. "cc:" followed by the names of everyone who receives a copy, which the addressee can see. Copying somebody's manager is a visible act and reads as escalation whether or not you meant it that way.
• Blind copy. "bcc:" appears only on the file copy and the copies themselves, never on the letter to the addressee. Think before using it in anything contentious: a hidden copy that later surfaces damages the sender more than the disclosure would have.

The notice clause decides the channel

Contracts often carry a notice clause setting out how formal notice must be given: in writing, to a named address, sometimes by a specified method such as recorded delivery or courier, sometimes expressly excluding email. A notice served the wrong way can be no notice at all, which means the termination, the extension, or the claim never happened. Read the clause before you decide the channel, and keep proof of sending and of delivery.

One thing does not change when the correspondence moves to email. The UK disclosure rules read every reference to a document as covering it in hard copy, electronic or any other form, so a company email doing the work of a business letter carries the same registered name, number, place of registration and registered office as the printed page. Put them in the email footer once and stop thinking about it. For the craft of the message itself, see the formal email guide.

A complete example

Full block layout, on company paper, with the disclosure footer. The company, people and figures are invented, and the registration details are shown as placeholders rather than made-up numbers.

The template

Fill in the brackets, and strip out any line your correspondence does not use. The .docx carries this form, the letter above, and the letterhead disclosure checklist.

What to keep out

• A footer too small to read. Where disclosure is a legal requirement, it has to be legible, and shrinking it to protect the design defeats the point of having it.
• A subject line without a number. "Regarding our recent order" makes the letter unfindable in a file of four hundred.
• Commitments the signatory cannot make. Check authority before sending, particularly on price, dates, and anything that varies a contract.
• A blind copy in a dispute. If you would not put the name on the visible cc line, ask why you are sending the copy at all.
• Both a reference and no reference. Quoting theirs but omitting yours is the version that costs you when they reply and nobody on your side knows which file it belongs to.

Sources

• United Kingdom: Companies Act 2006 sections 82, 83 and 84 with the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015 Part 6. Regulation 24 puts the registered name on business correspondence; regulation 25 adds the part of the UK of registration, the registered number and the registered office to business letters, order forms and websites; regulation 20 requires characters readable with the naked eye; regulation 26 is the every-director rule; regulation 28 makes breach an offence by the company and every officer in default, with a fine up to level 3 on the standard scale plus a daily default fine; regulation 29 applies all of it to documents in hard copy, electronic or any other form; section 83 allows dismissal of the company's own contract claim. Companies Act 2006 Part 41 carries the parallel duty for sole traders and partnerships.
• India: Companies Act 2013 section 12, in force from 1 April 2014, requiring the company name, registered office address, Corporate Identity Number, telephone number and, where they exist, fax, email and website on business letters, billheads, letter papers, notices and official publications; the second proviso to section 12(3) placing the words One Person Company in brackets below the company name wherever the name is printed, affixed or engraved; section 12(8) setting a penalty of 1,000 rupees per day of default capped at 100,000 rupees, on the company and every officer in default.
• Nigeria: Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020 section 729(1)(c), company name and registration number in legible characters on business letters, notices, advertisements and other official publications; section 304, every director named on trade circulars, show cards and business letters bearing the company name that are issued or sent to a person in Nigeria. Kenya: Companies Act 2015 section 67 with the Companies (General) Regulations 2015, registered name on communication documents. Ghana: Companies Act 2019 (Act 992) section 125 for the name and section 186 for the directors' names in trade circulars and business letters.
• United States: no federal company law and therefore no federal letterhead requirement. Federal law prescribes content for particular correspondence instead, including the disclosure a debt collector must make in its communications and the physical postal address required in commercial email.
• Signature practice: Companies Act 2006 section 51, personal liability of a person purporting to act for a company not yet formed. The abbreviation p.p. is recorded by lexicographers in more than one order, because per procurationem and per pro read in opposite directions.
• Enclosure, copy and reference-initial conventions as published by university writing centres and business correspondence guides: notation placement flush left below the signature block, enclosures named or counted, cc visible to the addressee, bcc omitted from the addressee's copy.

This page is general information about business correspondence, not legal advice. Disclosure obligations depend on your jurisdiction and entity type, and notice provisions depend on the contract; check both before you rely on a letter to do something legally.