Incorporator
Incorporating Your Business Online
with Incorporator.com.au
by Neal Macrossan
"Incorporator.com.au is an
interesting resource I came across when hunting for advice on
structuring our business. So I asked Neal Macrossan to tell us about
it...." editor
Incorporator.com.au is a powerful
interactive, artificially intelligent computer program/website for
the creation of Australian Companies (any type or class). It is
incredibly simple to use, extremely convenient, highly economical
($79.95 per usage – optionally payable at the end, not the
beginning) and accurate. It is also easy on the eye and the brain -
no ‘geek speak’ or unintelligible error messages. It is available 24
hours a day / 7 days per week. Help is only a phone call away – on a
1300 number – for the price of a local call from anywhere in
Australia.
Users answer a series of questions,
mostly by selecting from a range of pre-determined optional answers.
The ‘interview’ process is intelligent in that users’ answers
generally determine the next question they are asked. In this way
users are not bothered by any questions that are not strictly
applicable to their situation. Guidance is available, via ‘pop-up
windows’, to help users appropriately answer any questions about
which they are unsure. Virtually all guidance is backed up by
reference to relevant sections of the Corporations Law (all
‘hyper-linked’ to the actual section wording of the legislation).
On completion of the interview
process, users are able to pay, via a secure payments system
(Telstra’s ‘Settlement Solutions’ system), for all the necessary
documents that Incorporator has, by that time, created for them.
These documents automatically download to the user’s PC. They are of
extremely high quality and are tailored taking into account the
user’s answers to its questions as well as all the relevant
provisions of the Corporations Law.
The user then prints out the documents
on the user’s own printer, signs or has them signed as necessary,
and posts or personally lodges the application to incorporate with
ASIC (clear and concise instructions about these matters are
included with the print-outs). A Certificate of Incorporation is
then issued to the user directly by ASIC. The remaining documents
are kept as the company’s initial statutory records.
Test Drive the site
Potential users may test drive the
site at
www.incorporator.com.au;
there is no need to pre-pay or register - users will only be asked
for a credit card number right near the end - and at that stage
users can pull out if you don't want to go any further.
Price
The amount charged to users of the
site (but only if they elect to download and print out the
documents) is $79.95. This compares very favourably with the charge
made by orthodox shelf company providers – mostly in the range of
$160 to $280. (Also there is a government fee payable to ASIC of
$720. So the total cost using Incorporator, including the government
charge, would be $799.95 whereas a common all-up cost with shelf
company providers is around $1000.00.)
Internal Checks
Incorporator has loads of internal
checks, and associated and informative error messages in order to
prevent users accidentally breaching various provisions of the
Corporations Law or otherwise making errors. (As a very basic
example, if the user enters a date of birth for a proposed director
indicating that the proposed director is less than 18 years of age,
the system will show a clear error message indicating that a
proposed director must be at least 18 years of age.)
Optional save and re-use inputs
feature
Users may choose to save their inputs
under a username and password of their choice and re-access them at
any time.
Advantages of saving inputs
1. If a user’s session on
Incorporator is accidentally terminated, the user will be able to
retrieve the information they have inputted – they won't lose it all
and have to re-type it.
2. Users can enter the
information in stages. For example, users might be half way through
Incorporator and decide that they want to complete their inputs
later that day or on another day - they will later be able to type
in new inputs from where they left off.
3. User’s will be able to take
advantage of information they entered on a previous run which may
also be applicable to their formation of a future company - for
example details of the applicant and the lodging party or standard
"shelf company" structural patterns (e.g. 2 directors each holding
one ordinary fully paid share each). They won't have to re-type
them.
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