Important steps for your French business
There’s a lot of things to do when creating a business. There’s so much to do, in fact, that you may just focus too much on your activity and forget other things needed for a company to function. As such, here’s just a little list of steps that are easy to forget, but that you should absolutely do when creating your company!
Summary:
- Requesting the opening of a bank account
- Insuring the company
- Join an approved management organization
- Set up your management tools and prepare your mandatory registers
- Join an employee supplementary pension fund
- In case of presence of employees
- Check that the name you have chosen is not already protected
- Finally, do not forget …
1- Requesting the opening of a bank account
In most cases, you wouldn’t forget this step, since it’s a pre-requisite to your professional activity, but it is not always mandatory. Despite that, it’s strongly recommended to open a separate bank account for your activity, if only to separate private and professional cash-flow.
These are the situations in which it is mandatory to open a bank account:
- When creating a company
- If you are subjected to the Micro-Company regime or have opted for the Micro-Social regime
2- Insuring the company
No matter what your activity is, remember that one accident could potentially jeopardize the survival of your company.
As such, remember to assess the risks, figuring out which ones you can cover yourself, and which ones you need to get insurance for.
3- Joining an approved management organization
Again, this step is not mandatory, but it is still incredibly helpful. Not only do these organizations have the role of assisting businesses in terms of management, but in certain cases, they can also lead to tax benefits such as the non-application of the 25% increase in taxable profit, or the possibility of deducting the spouse’s salary for tax purposes.
Note: to benefit from the non-application of increased taxable profit, this approach must be completed within 5 months after the creation of the company.
4- Setting up management tools and preparing mandatory registers
These management tools, which you will build yourself, will allow you to highlight the key points of your business and to have an overview of your business, and thus help you pilot it.
In addition, it is mandatory to keep certain records (a record of the revenue, journal book, unique personnel register if applicable, etc.). Some will have to be quoted by the commercial court or by the town hall before one can write anything in them, so it’s important to do this step early enough.
Take the time, before the actual launch of your activity, to prepare these tools which will then be essential to the good management of your company!
5- Joining a complimentary employee pension fund
Within 3 months of registering your business, you will need to join an employee supplemental pension fund even if you don’t plan to hire any employees. Don’t worry though, you won’t have to pay any contributions until you actually hire someone.
Please note: after this period of 3 months, an interprofessional fund will be imposed.
6- If there are any employees:
- Joining a labor health center.
- Obtaining the applicable national collective agreement in your company. You can either download one from Legifrance, or by buying one in paper form from the French Documentation
7- Making sure that the name you have chosen is not already protected
Check with the INPI that the name chosen to designate your company or product is not already used or registered as a trademark. Also, check that this name is available as a domain name either at a registration office or at Afnic by consulting the “whois” database.
Finally, do not forget to ask for the opening of a professional telephone line, and to make yourself known to the postal service.
