ASIC fees to rise — Need to register a company? Save a little this financial year

Christopher Balmford, MD

On 1 July 2011, the ASIC fee:

• for registering a Proprietary Limited (Pty Ltd) company will increase from $412 to $426. The Cleardocs fee of $137.50 (inc. GST) will stay the same.
• for reserving a name (or extending a name reservation) for a Proprietary Limited (Pty Ltd) company will increase from $41 to $42. The Cleardocs fee of $22 (inc. GST) will stay the same.

According to ASIC, the fee rises are to reflect an increase in the Consumer Pricing Index (CPI).
Also, there will be a one-off increase to the company annual review fee, to cover the increased costs of the national scheme.

Various other ASIC fees are increasing. You can read more information about the new fees here on ASIC’s website.

Remember you can use Cleardocs to create legal documents, and to register companies with ASIC 24 hours a day, even on weekends.

Registering companies this financial year
Also, remember:

• that company registrations cannot be back-dated. So if you need a new company to exist in this financial year, then you must register it before the end of this financial year; and
• that a company’s Certificate of Incorporation is dated the day that ASIC approves the registration – not the date the application is lodged (if those dates are different).

So if you find yourself with a last minute company to register, then make sure you keep an eye on your order through Cleardocs to make sure the company gets registered. For example, if you lodge a company registration application before 30 June 2011 but ASIC rejects the application, then you will need to make sure you correct and resubmit your application — and that it is successful — on or before 30 June 2011.

Extended helpline hours
We will extend our helpline hours for the last few days of the financial year. We'll answer the helpline:

• on the weekend of Saturday  25 and Sunday 26 June from 9am to 5pm; and
• each day from Monday 27 June until Thursday 30 June until at least 8pm.

Is the Certificate of Registration for a company you order online through Cleardocs sufficient to give a bank?

Christopher Balmford, MD

The Certificate of Registration for a company that ASIC sends to Cleardocs electronically — and that Cleardocs provides to its customers electronically — is the original Certificate. The only way ASIC provides its standard Certificates is electronically.

The standard Certificate is enough to open a bank account and is what most companies use.

(Apart from the standard certificate, you can order a hardcopy printed “commemorative certificate” direct from ASIC. These commemorative certificates cost extra, $39.95 each or $34.95 each for 2 or more. There are 12 different designs, for example: Australian birds, Australian icons, Agriculture, Classic, Commerce, and Technology. But ASIC makes a commemorative certificate for you only if you specifically order one direct from ASIC after your company is registered. ASIC will then send the commemorative certificate to the company. It doesn’t send them to Cleardocs.)

Bank rejection? Occasionally when someone is trying to set up a bank account for a company, the bank rejects the Certificate. A bank that does this — or at least, the relevant branch that does this — is several years out of date with ASIC’s systems etc.

If a bank rejects your certificate and asks “for the original certificate”, then the thing to do is to get the person at the bank to check the above information with ASIC. They can do that by:

• calling ASIC on 1300 300 630;
• when listening to the options, they should press 1, then 1 again; and
• when they speak to the person at ASIC, they should explain that they registered the company through Cleardocs and the Certificate they have given the bank came electronically from Cleardocs.

ASIC will explain things to the bank.

You might like to call ASIC on the number etc. above to confirm all this for yourself.

You can order a company online through Cleardocs for $549.50

You can read an Overview of some things to consider when registering an Australian company

Fastest online company registration

Christopher Balmford MD

You know, I'm curious about the fastest anyone has registered a company online through Cleardocs. Way back when we launched in 2002, one of our first customers set — what we reckon is — the record. But maybe someone has done it faster since, or will do it faster soon. Let us know if you do.

The speed we enabled was unusual in 2002. When Cleardocs launched, we were the first purely online company registration provider. Through Cleardocs, our customers could, for the first time anywhere:

• log on,
  
• answer the questions on our interface,
  
• electronically lodge the application to register the company with ASIC, and
  
• receive the ACN and all the legal documents immediately by email.

It was pretty exciting stuff. In 2002, none of our competitors could do anything like it. Even if they enabled you to order through their website, someone at their end had to do something manually to register your company. So if you wanted a company at 6.30pm (or am!), it was likely to be tough. But at Cleardocs.com, it didn't matter what time it was, or what day it was, you could register a brand new company. You still can — we have people ordering companies 24/7. If ASIC's site is open etc. (and it pretty much always is), then you can register a company through Cleardocs.

Anyway back in 2002, one of our very first customers who had done a few company registrations with Cleardocs rang to say she wanted to know what the record was for the fastest company. Her name is Janette Boluch. I just spoke to her a few minutes ago. In 2002, she worked at Manning & Perry, now she is with Chris Wilson and Associates in Hawthorn in Melbourne. And she still uses Cleardocs. Thank you, Janette!

We reckon Janette still holds the record for:

"An Australian company registration through Cleardocs — from logging on, through answering all the questions, to getting the response from ASIC that the company is registered with an ACN."

Janette's time? 11.5 minutes. Let us know if you beat it.