Before you can start up as a self-employed worker, you'll need to comply with legal obligations, set up your company and register it.
If you've never heard of legal status before, now's the time to start thinking about it. This is the legal form of your future sole proprietorship or one-man business.
It's up to you to choose between these great forms.
Your company's registered office is the address of your registered office. This is your company's administrative and tax address. It determines the nationality of your company, as well as the court with territorial jurisdiction to hear disputes arising from your business.
This address is mandatory, and must appear in your company's articles of association. Without it, your application will be rejected by your CFE (center de formalités des entreprises) and no Kbis will be issued.
This address is also the one that will appear on all official company documents, from invoices and quotations to contracts and the "Contact" page of your website.
Your place of business is the place from which you work. It often has nothing to do with the address of your registered office. Legally, it has no consequences.
Above all, as a freelancer, you're going to be working from places that aren't your home base. If you're on the move, your place of business will change every day. However, the address of your head office will not change.
That's why it's so important to choose the right address for your company. The address of your registered office should not change every morning. Otherwise, you'll have to keep modifying your articles of association, so that you'll always be able to receive mail from the authorities, among other documents.
You're probably in a hurry to get your business up and running, to get to the heart of the matter and face up to the competition. However, it's never a good idea to rush into things, or to think that the address of your registered office has no consequences for your entrepreneurial activity.
Once you've decided on the legal form of your company, and drawn up the Articles of Association, it's time to consider the address you'd like to give your registered office. You have a number of choices in this respect, as you can set the address :
- At your own home,
- At your desk,
- In a business incubator,
- In a domiciliation company.
We'll explain the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options.
- Choose your home address for your head office
This is the economical solution par excellence, enabling you to receive all your company mail without spending a single cent. Why should this be? Because your personal address will be your company's address, so you'll be sharing the same mailbox.
However, there are several problems with this type of domiciliation. The first concerns the distinction between your private and professional life. Having a registered office address identical to your home address imposes your business on your family.
You should also be aware that the address of a company's registered office is publicly visible on the Internet. Sites such as societe.com, entreprises.lefigaro.fr and verif.com display a wide range of information about your company, including :
- Your name, as manager,
- The date your company was founded,
- Its legal form,
- Head office address,
- SIREN, SIRET and VAT numbers.
In other words, once you become the manager of a company, you are no longer anonymous. It's sometimes a good idea to remain anonymous, especially when you're going to be working with dozens, then hundreds, of different customers.
You're never safe from a disgruntled, unbalanced customer visiting your home.
Added to this is the fact that using your home address as your company's registered address is subject to legal restrictions. You may be prohibited from using this option by :
- Your lease contract,
- Co-ownership regulations,
- Local planning regulations.
For the first two cases, simply refer to the documents you already have. For the latter, you'll need to go to your local town hall, or contact them by phone and ask for the town planning department. They'll be happy to help.
If one of these cases applies to you, the law allows you to use your home address as your registered office address for a period of 5 years. After this period, if you have not changed your registered office address, the clerk of the commercial court will deregister your company.
Between the cost of a change of registered office address (change of status, publication in a legal gazette, payment of court fees, etc.), and the risk of forgetting the five-year time limit, it's often better to domicile your business permanently from the outset.
- Domiciliation at your office address
If you're lucky enough to havepremises that serve as your office, you can use the address of this office as your registered address. But chances are, as a freelancer, you don't have such a place.
When setting up our first business, we often tend to overestimate the results we can expect, to magnify the situation we'll be in. In short, we tend to want to pull out all the stops, even to the point of thinking about renting or buying commercial premises to set up an office.
This can be a good idea, if your company is strong enough to meet the costs inherent in buying the property you need, or renting it out. Otherwise, this is an expensive solution, and will add to the monthly costs your company will have to face (domain name rental, software and digital platform subscriptions, etc.).
Renting or buying premises to set up an office is therefore rarely a good idea when launching your company, because it's too expensive. It's even less likely that you'll need to take this decision in order to benefit from a domiciliation address.
- Domiciliation in a business incubator
You may be one of those entrepreneurs who have been supported by a business incubator. In that case, the idea of domiciling your company at the incubator's address seems particularly interesting.
All the more so as a business incubator is often associated with the idea of "start-up", "place of incubation" - in short, "dynamism". So, choosing to domicile your company in such a structure is an opportunity to benefit from this reputation.
In addition, you can take advantage of resources that are essential to the day-to-day running of your company:
- Printer,
- Scanner,
- Set of office automation tools.
However, domiciliation in a business incubator rarely exceeds six months. Just long enough to get your Kbis and start your business. Then, instead of focusing on developing your business, you'll have to focus on changing the address of your registered office.
This means reconstituting a file for your CFE, paying the costs inherent in the change of articles of association we've already talked about: clerk's fees, advertisement in one or two legal gazettes, etc.
It's usually at this point that the notion of "sustainability" really comes to mind. What kind of head office address is suitable for the long term? Fortunately, there is a solution. It's not the cheapest, but it's the safest, and it comes with many advantages.
This is the most sustainable solution for two reasons:
- It is subject to a contract,
- There is no time limit.
In fact, you can keep your chosen registered office address for as long as you like.
Because a domiciliation company has precisely this advantage: it offers you a multitude of addresses from which you can choose the one that will become the address of your head office. You see where we're going with this: to the prestigious address.
Whatever your business, you can dream of setting up your company on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, or in downtown Marseille, Lille or Toulouse. With a domiciliation company, this is entirely possible. The official documents issued by your company will show the domiciliation address you have chosen.
And that's not all. The domiciliation company will offer you a list of services, to which you are free to subscribe or not:
- A telephone hotline,
- Receiving, sending and scanning mail,
- Office rental,
- Meeting room rental,
- Provision of office equipment.
So, if you're thinking of opening an office for your freelance business, it's perfectly possible to start with a domiciliation company, and then build up as your business develops. The domiciliation company can take care of your telephone answering service, you can receive customers or prospects in their offices, and so on.
Last but not least, using a domiciliation company is affordable. It saves time, because everything can be done directly online with the assistance of a legal department, but it also saves money.
You won't have to change your company's articles of association every time you move or reach the legal deadline for domiciling your registered office at home or in a business incubator.
The fact that you are protected by a contract, which binds you to a domiciliation company approved by the prefecture of its place of business, also protects you from unpleasant surprises.
As you can see, the benefits of domiciling your business with a domiciliation company can be summed up in five points, which we have already detailed:
- Separating your private life from your professional life,
- Protection of your personal address,
- A prestigious address,
- Choose from a wide range of complementary services,
- Take advantage of dematerialized mail.
The domiciliation company offers you a flexibility that you won't find with any other form of domiciliation for your head office. It can really be used as a lever for your company's development.
If you're thinking of taking your business from a simple freelance activity to managing a freelance agency, then a domiciliation company is the right option for you. It will enable you to scale up your business while deferring as far as possible the financial investment you'll need to make in the purchase of a property.
You can even set up a 100% digital agency, with your staff meeting only as often as necessary in a meeting room rented for this purpose from your domiciliation company. The possibilities offered by a domiciliation company can therefore be adapted directly to your needs.
This means that freelancers can have their registered address directly attheir home address, provided that this is made possible by the lease and by condominium and town-planning regulations.
Although it is possible to set up your business in a business incubator, this is not sustainable and will require you to transfer your registered office, which will cost you time and money.
Domiciliation at a possible office address can be an interesting solution, but it's not clear that it's particularly well suited to freelance activity. The advantage of this type of business is often that it is linked to a digital activity that can be carried out from any location. Buying real estate or renting a property is therefore rarely a suitable solution.
Conversely, domiciling your business with a domiciliation company offers a number of advantages. On the one hand, the relationship is contractual and therefore protects both parties, and on the other, domiciliation companies offer a wide range of services, enabling freelancers to adapt their company structures without having to invest in premises.
Last but not least, domiciliation via a domiciliation company not only gives you a prestigious address, but is also accessible to all budgets, with packages starting from 14 euros per month.
