Online Signature Legality for Startup Business Plan in United Kingdom: Simplify Document Signing Process

How to eSign a document: online signature legality for Startup Business Plan in United Kingdom

want to know how to start a new limited company well watch on as a business accountant my team and I spend all day long helping business owners on their journey and one key thing we help people with is getting started with limited companies so in this video I want to look at the Practical things you need to decide there's quite a few key decisions I want to talk to you about what actually is a limited company very quick recap and talk you through the decisions you need to make it's not a step-by-step we're going to go click on buttons it's going to be the overview of that and telling you where you need to go and how you would go about forming this company and at the end I also want to talk to you about some of the Practical things to get yourself going now this video has been popular we've done it before so I thought it was time to do a 2023 version and just Jazz it up and talk to you about some new bits we've learned along the way that you all ask in the comments in the other videos so talking to videos if you do enjoy these make sure to click the Subscribe button and the bell below so you get notified whenever we release more videos just like this one so then first off let's recap briefly what a limited company actually is so it's its own legal thing legal entity is the word it's it's completely in law it's his own thing it's almost like another person if you like so when you form it we're going to talk about in a minute you as the owner will generally be like the shareholder you'll probably be the director of the person that's sort of in charge of the company and there's a bit of paper so you get a company's house you or to an agent we're going to talk about this in a minute and at the end of it you're going to get a bit of paper a certificate of incorporation it says legally this company exists it's got a name it's a thing it can sign its own contracts or you can sign it on its behalf it is legally in existence and what that brings with it is something that is limited liability which means generally and there are exceptions to this is your assets will be protected so things like your house so if it all goes wrong somebody sues you the insurance doesn't pay out the company tumbles um it's not got enough cash to pay those people what they've claimed off of you then generally generally if you're not done anything wrong your house and things are protected or I don't know it goes into a bad for getting the su-in thing it goes into a bad trading situation you owe money to the tax office and somebody hasn't paid you to pay the bill and the end of it then generally if you've done nothing wrong you're protected so that limited liability is quite and there's other videos on the channel talking about the pros and cons of being limited whether you should be limited or not and for me that's the first decision you need to make when we talk about it you're here because you want to start a limited Company please please please think about it now go watch the other content go read blogs do do whatever you got to do decide first whether the limited company is right for you because for many people starting off a little side hustle a limited company is not the thing you want to be doing when you start for various different reasons that are covered in those other videos I'm sure we'll link them in and around this video so you can click on those so that's Decision One do you actually want to be a limited company now just before we talk about the other key decisions I did mention that it's oh it's its own legal thing it's completely separate and as a business owner it's really important to remember that because when you're doing your records or when you're thinking of drawing money from the company and taking your pay you've got to remember that that money is the company's money at all times until you get paperwork in place that says it's not whether that be payroll whether that's paying out some dividends to you whether it's paying yourself in expenses whatever the case may be it's the company's money keep that in your mind and we'll talk about that in a bit more practical detail as we go so decision one then what does that look like we'll talk about decision zero which is do you actually need to form the company but decision one and that's what you're gonna call it it's really important so the first step you do is you choose a company name now some names are restricted so things like Royal and as you'd expect things like that they're restricted you might need to ask for permission so we did form one the other day that was actually somebody's surname but their surname was a restricted word so you sometimes have to ask and sometimes that's easy but it just adds a bit of delay in the process and some things you might not get approval for so that's the first thing the other thing is to do a quick Google have a look through look to see if there's an existing trademark maybe but just a simple Google would be quite important to find out what people are calling their limited if you go to companies house beta you type that in Google you can search for existing limited company so make sure your name is not already taken now when you get a format with like a formation agent or company's house we'll talk about in a minute it'll often tell you if there's a clash but it's worth knowing that some get really similar so sometimes these systems we'll send it back saying it's okay and when you form it you figure out there's just a version of your one with a UK next to it or something or there's one initial difference or there's an s on the end something like that so do go and check at company's house to make sure there's not something too similar and because you could end up being asked to change it particularly you might also want to check out if there's a trademark existing because you could end up doing everything and then get a letter on your doorstep that says please change your company name I have seen that with clients so uh please do do those little checks at the beginning quick reminder on that as well but a limited company name doesn't have to be the same as what you want to trade as so you might want to call yourself I don't know the cool shop uh not that name maybe but the cool shop but your company might be something because you know your initials Enterprise is limited it's completely fine I think most people like the fact that they they line up and it makes it easier for people to kind of take in customers in that and the old days of writing checks it would have been far easier to write the check in a naturally uh sort of named company but these days it's not so much of an issue but it does help when someone goes say to pay into your bank account I think it really helps if the things look like the same so people are aware particularly with how online and open banking works now with checking whether that business account is registered to those people and sometimes it will show a name suggestion I think it's quite nice for them to match but just know it doesn't have to so if you really can't find you've got this trading name you really just can't find a limited company that's going to be the same don't worry too much just call it something different so bear that in mind now decision two you're gonna have to choose where the registered office is now the registered office is on a public record if you've done your check I talked about and you went to companies house and typed in all any limited company name you want you'll find an address on there that's a registered office it's going to be on the public record so you've got to think about that from day one because you don't want if you want to put your personal address in there your personal address will be on the company's house record now what many people do is they'll buy a registered office address they'll leave you using accountants they'll use many accountants off of that service or they use like if you just typed in registered office address buy one you'd find there's loads of providers there that would offer those out as well and that's quite a good alternative I do know that it needs to be read addressed though if it can't just be just to make it Progressive or anything that's gonna be a physical address with a um with a postcode you know that someone can see now the other thing to bear in mind with this and I think it's worth when I'm talking about practicals it's worth thinking about the registered offices for company's house it needs to go on any legal paperwork so if you like issue invoices you're going to put it down there at the bottom but you might not want to use it for say like Google my business you might have a different trading address you might be renting a little office or something you'd rather be the face so they can be different build like a trading name thing I just mentioned they could also be different you'd have a different trading address to your registered office so many people have the registered office that say their accountant's office with companies house but the trading address is different so bear that in mind because the last thing you want to do is go register your registered office on Google my business and it's like you know 200 businesses registered at that location on the map when you Google Maps it might not be ideal for you sometimes that that is all you can do but if you've got a choice that's something to consider that can be different know that that's fine now the decision three is all about who's going to own the company so we talked about it so normally you if it's just gonna be you on your own you're going to be the share holder so the shareholders the owner so you get issued shares because it's over here your company and for you to own it you have a share of it in most cases you're going to take either the one whole share or you might do a hundred some people like hundreds so you issue 100 shares at say a pound and then you're going to hold those shares you're the owner now one of the things to consider is you might want other people to be involved with it and be owners of the company now I would always say to people be very careful about doing that because changing that later can be done but it might have tax consequences for everybody involved so do have a think about that but you might also want to consider whether you want to set it up in a in a strange way where you have what they call alphabet shares where the shares are called something slightly different that can be good for future tax planning if any of this is going straight over your head it might be worth reaching out to someone and like an accountant or a professional in that area and finding out whether there's you know a good thing for you to do but just know that that's possible and again you can change these things later but sometimes that can be costly and or have tax consequences so when you get a set up just think who is the owners what do I want to do here but ultimately it's particularly when we get to the end and we talk about the practicals of like opening a bank account or something the easier that structure the easier some of these things are so it might be in the early days you just form it in your name and then figure out the rest later but just know that that is a decision that you need to make who is going to own this and be really careful about who you choose um to be those owners now we're going to talk in the next decision about who's going to be the directors who's going to run it but note that the directors and the shareholders don't have to be the same people they can be both they could be some could be one and not the other um so it's fine so you have got that flexibility as well I think that's quite a common thing so yeah you're going to go and choose their next the next decision who's going to run it who's going to be legally responsible and this is really important because a lot of people miss this that there is quite a lot of Legally enforceable responsibilities you have as a director of a limited company and you can ultimately be prosecuted so I don't want to scare you away from that but it is worth knowing if you get a company's house just Google your responsibilities as a director there's tons of articles on there that tell you but effectively you've got to act in the best interest of this company and act in an appropriate way to avoid many of the problems you've also got responsibilities for filing and if you want to know what those are you're in the right place there's a ton of videos on that where we're going to talk to you about how to how and what to file so go and check those out but again you're legally responsible for that if you're a director and again there can be some tax opportunities to be a director so again people will often talk to us about that but again at the beginning you might just want to keep it simple if it's just going to be you you might want to be you and the shareholder but those options are there but bear in mind any other directors need to be 16 or over to be able to do this because we get approached quite often through the through the YouTube channel or on Instagram and people talk with us who are under you know they're like 15-ish thinking of starting a business and that unfortunately isn't going to really work with a limited company you do need to be able to be 16 or over to be that director so just bear the age limit in mind so then it's time you've you've made all them decisions right come on come on down tell us about what we do now you're going to go and form it so you've got a couple of options really you can either do it directly companies house that's the cheapest option you can go on you can apply online you can pass small fee and it will form it there all these formation things take you know about 24 hours to show up most of the time sometimes it can actually be quicker it can be done really quick it just depends on the backlog in the various computer systems but can be really really done quite quick with it you do it direct or whether you use a formation agent so formation agent could be an accountancy could be there's just online ones you can use whatever the case may be and the service offerings are various some will do different things for you so form a little company's house will get you the basics it will legally exist you will get an incorporation certificate if you adopt what they call the model articles of Association they'll do like a template thing that they file online for you so it exists and there's some structure to how the company legally exists that's great but one of the key missing documents you're required to hold onto the companies Act is something known as the company registers which is like a pack of documents the other thing that registers is apart from being legally required and you've got to have them there in certain lending situations or situations where you're I don't know you get investment and things like that often people will want to see these documents something you have to look as accountants we have to certify them quite often to say they exist then it's proof of the owners of the company and things like that they are really important document if you've got ideas of this business growing legal aside there is a real importance to them there's another video on this but let's just say it's a pack of documents of information around who owns the shares where they live all that kind of stuff it's an internal document doesn't go anywhere but you need to legally hold it you don't tend to get that when you form it with company's house in fact you don't get it when you do it with a formation agent you might and it's worth looking at I know like if we do it we always have these things because we think it's really important and other online and other people who do this will also do that so that's one thing really think about that when you do it if you're going to do a company's house you won't have these things so I think am I actually better investing in it now with somewhere else and sometimes the formation agent will do other things like they'll register you for your corporation tax or they might have some other interaction with your tax in terms of lining up periods or registered for this some formation agents or even sort your bank account they have arrangements and other things so there can be other benefits to use in formation agent rather than company's house although company's house will alert the revenue generally when you've formed the company so you normally get contact from the revenue site later on saying here you go here's your corporation tax reference we know you're a company and things like that so whichever route you take the tax is likely to at least get you in the system but it's not always the most ideal outcome without going into too much detail that there's things that can occur during that formation process that can make the tax returns the wrong dates and things like that so just bear that in mind now the other thing you're going to be asked to as you form this company is you're going to be asked to find a SIC code and that's like it tells the company's house that ultimately anybody kind of Googling in company's house a rough idea of what the company does so you're just going to pick the most appropriate thing there's a big list of them and you just go through it and there are some generic categories like other Professional Services or something something not elsewhere classified so there are some kind of more rounded codes you can also choose multiple codes if you really wanted to so there are options there I wouldn't dwell on it too much pick something that's relevant to you um then and pick that it can be changed later as well if you do change it so we've had clients change trade and use the same limited company or something like that you can change them later so uh but do just pick the thing that's relevant and go from there I do know there isn't it's not a never-ending category there is randomly a category for like extraterrestrial organizations but then some particular fairly common uh types of trade you'll be like oh there's no code so just pick the one that's most relevant closest to what you do so then some practical stuff you've so you'll have this company be formed you'll end up getting a certificate of incorporation you need that save that with your life because you need that to be able to go and open a bank account now because it's his own separate legal thing the company is going to want a bank account in its own name it needs to own its own money and everything else and obviously when clients and customers pay you you're going to want to be able them to be able to pay into the bank so for me the bank accounts literally form the company get on with the bank account and it's why I've tagged it in this video because I think it's often the missing piece now to do that there are obviously the High Street options they do take generally slightly longer although they are bringing out online options at the time recording this video some do offer for online options it could be quite quick you've also got the Challenger Banks so you've got the starlings of the world for example who are all online application and if you're in a rush at the time of recording this that's one of the quickest ways of doing it for presuming you've got nothing crazy going on in your background you should be able to get through that fairly easy so that's quite good as well so but I've not got any tips for you in terms of which one's better I think they're all much of a muchness they do charge some of them charge money for certain different things than others do some of them will say it's free banking until you want to pay cash in like they've all got go check them out I'm sure we've done some videos on this before but ultimately get yourself a bank account so you can get paid you might be asked for some of the shareholdering information we've talked about and you've got to fill in your details you might be asked for your tax reference that might take a little bit of time to come through you might be asked for that before you've actually got it and some banks will just let you give them that later some might not so just bear that in mind that might be one small sticking block but that's the Corp if they're referring to a tin that's the tax like they use internationally but it's basically a tax reference or you might hear unique tax ref reference or utr all these terms that's a 10 digit number you'll get from the tax office for your corporation tax so you will sometimes be asked for that so by all means go get the bank account but one of the other things you could have some banks will ask for an accountant or someone else to say yes this company is trading and yes this is the registered office and kind of rubber stamp that so again depending on your situation you might get asked for that I know we did an absolute ton of letters for styling at the back end of last year they've won in that kind of information so for our clients so that is very very common and again finally the only other thing I'd say on bank accounts is have a look just to check they're actually a bank there's a lot of people there's some online ones that you revolute and people like this and just get a feel for where you're going to put your money because if you're going to be everyone thinks banks are okay but if you've been around in the last year in early part of 2023 you'd have seen Banks failing all over the place and things like that so just be happy that where you're putting your money is it looks at least relatively safe and secure have a look see if they're part of the you know the financial services back in that you get for the 85 000 pound protection there's a few things to look for but just go and have a look and make sure we are comfy with the bank account that you're booting up and then finally it would be remiss of me not to talk about what you've got to do now you've got this company I think we've done tons of videos on this there's lots of decisions you've got to make early once you've formed it but do go and have a look at what your filing requirements are and consider about whether you need an accountant to help you with some of this stuff limited companies are much more complex than the sole Trader self-employed equivalents you know if you've been self-employed for a while you would have been used to logging on in your tax return online maybe for free and doing that different ballgame of companies and that's a whole other video but go research it early that's it that's literally the takeaway point from the accountant side of it I'm not gonna Hard Sell you on it but go have a look and just check that you know and you're comfy of whether you can do it or not seek out help early and of course keep Good Records tons of videos on here about how to do that so hopefully that's going to get you started on your journey The Limited company I wish you loads of luck and of course drop any comments you've got down below and I'll see what we can do to help you out if we can answer them and I'll see in the next one