I have inherited an iMac at work. As we only have 3 Macs, there was no central App Store account. I've now set up a company account, but some of the software is showing updates in the Store, but I can't update them, because they are registered to a different Apple account (somebody who no longer works for the company, so I can't get the ID and password entered on the iMac).

The main apps showing updates are iLife.

Is there any way to get them "correctly" registered to the company account? As these are "free" apps in the store, I don't see why they can't be updated by any account...

Have you tried contacting Apple? They might have a solution.

I don't think I ever did get XCode sorted on my old MacBook. That was registered to a developer account that wasn't my main AppleID before the App Store came along. Post-App-Store it was always a right pig to update.

My suspicion would be that the app store has updated the apps at some point in the past and therefore has a certificate for them which ID's them as locked to the 'personal' account. Your best solution might be to do a google to see where the app store app encryption certs are stored and delete them for the apps in question, then download the apps again from the app store using the new account - or in the case of iLife, re-install them from the DVD the macs came with then run the app store app with the new account so it can spot they are there.

That does assume that they had the discs. iLife has been online for quite some time. Also I think I had to buy my last versions online so I suspect that simply deleting them and buying again might be the only solution.