Re­gis­ter­ing your business: the steps you need to take

The ex­cite­ment of starting your business can often be coupled with ex­haus­tion at the amount of things you need to take into account – es­pe­cially for small busi­nesses, which often need to do things in­de­pend­ently at first. Having an overview of what needs to be done in the early stages can be really helpful – es­pe­cially for bur­eau­crat­ic processes such as re­gis­ter­ing your business. In this article you’ll find a checklist of the in­form­a­tion you’ll need to have at hand, as well as the re­gis­tra­tion processes you’ll need to go through to make sure your business is re­gistered so it can stay up and running!

Before diving into the steps you’ll need to take to register your business, it is a good idea to make sure you’ve checked off these business basics. Having a clear overview of the following things will help you register your business quickly.

• Business location: Where is your business based?
• Business structure: To register your business, you’ll need to know if it will be set up as a sole trader, limited company, or part­ner­ship.
• Certain things like your busi­nesses name are probably something you’ll already have thought of – just make sure the name is not already re­gistered, and if you want to use the same name across the board, that the domain hasn’t been taken.
• Ownership: Again, this may seem obvious, but having the details on this in­form­a­tion is vital for re­gis­ter­ing your business. This also includes the director of your business, and in­form­a­tion on how the man­age­ment system is struc­tured.

Simply being aware of this in­form­a­tion will help make the re­gis­tra­tion process easier, so make sure you have it at hand – or at least in mind!

You may need to register your business with Companies House. This depends on the legal structure of your business, and this is why it is good to have planned this out in your business plan before you go ahead and open for business. Sole traders, for example, do not need to register with Companies House. In the case of sole traders, they just need to register as self-employed, and return an annual self-as­sess­ment tax return to HMRC each year.

If, on the other hand, you are starting up a limited company, or an LLP, you are legally obliged to register with Companies House.

Depending on the specifics of your business, you may have to register. If this is the case, you’ll have to register with Companies House. The costs of this vary between companies, but it can cost as little as 12GBP. The cheapest way to register is online, by doing it yourself, and the ap­plic­a­tion usually takes 24 hours to process. Al­tern­at­ively, you can register by post, but this costs 40GBP, and takes eight to ten days. Our re­com­mend­a­tion is to consider an online ap­plic­a­tion. If you are in a rush, and need a same day re­gis­tra­tion, there is an express service, however this costs 100GBP, and requires you to have filled out and submitted the form online by 3pm.

Fur­ther­more, if you have a lot on your plate, you may want to consider asking a third party to do this for you, which is also a pos­sib­il­ity. There are many re­gis­trars that will take the hassle of having to sort this paperwork and the forms off your hands, but they will charge a fee for this. There are ad­vant­ages to asking a registrar to perform this service, however, as they will usually be ex­per­i­enced in handling these types of ap­plic­a­tions, and you can be assured that the ap­plic­a­tion process will be handled correctly, and without delay.

The process to register your business with Companies House as a limited company is very straight­for­ward. Make sure you have the in­form­a­tion in the above checklist to hand, as well as a memor­andum and articles of as­so­ci­ation (you can find pro­fes­sion­al templates for these online). Then you can register with Companies House, making sure that you keep these details secure, as you will need them at least once a year to upload documents. Once you’ve re­gistered online, you can follow the simple step-by-step in­struc­tions on the gov.uk re­gis­tra­tion site, and then provided all your forms and the correct fee has been paid, you should be re­gistered within 1 working day.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.