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A Guide to Incorporation Documents

When some people think about incorporating a company, or even think about Companies House, they imagine lots of red tape. But the number of documents you need to incorporate a company isn't necessarily that much. Besides a few forms and documents, you'll be set to go and start trading. But what documents do you actually need to incorporate a company?

Form IN01

The Companies House form IN01 is the incorporation document, and where any amendments to the Articles of Association can be noted (we'll cover this below).

This is also the document where you can specify further details about your new company, including:

  • Directors details
  • Share details
  • Details of the People with Significant Control (PSC)

You will specify service addresses for the officers, and also a residential address. Some of this information will be available on the Companies House website. You can find out more about this in another one of our blog posts here.

Memorandum of Association

In short, the Memorandum of Association outlines the basis of your company. It details the initial shareholders, and the intention of each shareholder in the company along with the official name of the company.

Even though it names the shareholders, you can change these at any time, even after formation. Some people find it easier to only list the founders of the company in this document and add other shareholders later - it's easy to do, and can even be done online.

Articles of Association

When you incorporate a new company, you'll need to have Articles of Association by law. It's basically a rulebook for how the company will be run - what directors can do, how to remove directors from the board, different types of shares, etc.

The good thing about this document is that Companies House actually supplies a model that you can use at the point of formation, which helps save you a bit of time (and money). The alternative is to write your own from scratch, but these would require a solicitor to check it to make sure it meets the requirements of the Companies Act 2009. The standard articles offered by Companies House will meet the needs for most new companies. They even offer different versions based on the different types of companies you're able to incorporate.

Of course, if you ever decide you want to change them, you can. All you would need to do is submit them to Companies House at a later date.

Additional Statement

The name you chose has to be available and also meet the criteria set by Companies House (check the restrictions out here). However, there are some cases where you may be able to bend the rules a little bit, providing you have evidence for doing so. This is called an Additional Statement, which will detail the reason you have chosen your company name.

You may, for example, want to use a name similar to a trademark. In this instance, you would include evidence of the approval of using the trademark, such as a letter from the trademark holder.

Conclusion

You may be thinking at this point that it's quite a bit of paperwork and lots of form filling. Relax - it doesn't need to be. Online formation agents such as The Company Wizard can help save a lot of the headaches with an easy to follow guide.

But if you're ready to incorporate your new company, you can start your application either online with a formation agent, or by filling out Form IN01.

If you want to use The Company Wizard to incorporate your new company and still have questions, contact us here. We're here to help, and to guide you through the incorporation process.

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