How to incorporate a company in Estonia with Enty: the detailed guide
We've already published a lot of articles about the different sides of the incorporation process in Estonia. Today in this article we would like to focus on the specific steps of the incorporation with Enty.
Just a quick reminder. If you are looking for a proper place to start your business, Estonia is one of the best jurisdictions for that: fast, transparent, highly digitalized, and great in terms of a tax regime. At the same time, Enty helps you to open a company as soon as possible, automate your company's back-office operations such as accounting, invoicing, banking, HR and others. Explore our website to find out more about Enty's services which make your business life less boring and complicated.
Step 1: Log In
Firstly, you should log in on our website, create a password, and confirm your email. After that, you'll get access to the company's profile where you'll be able to observe full information, documents, and plans on the next steps.
Step 2: Choose the Incorporation Option and Fill in Information About Your Future Company
Now it's time for you to choose whether you want to proceed with an e-Residency (Estonian ID-card and Mobile-ID, Lithuanian Mobile-ID, Latvian ID-card are accepted as well) or without it. Note that this information can be changed later, so don't be afraid to make mistakes :)
There are three incorporation paths with Enty:
1) Incorporation for one shareholder with e-Residency
If you want to become a single shareholder and proceed with e-Residency or other Digital IDs, the process of incorporation will be quick and easy without calls and consultations. You'll be able to open a company right on Enty's website, the whole process will take just several minutes, and your company will be incorporated during one business day.
2) Incorporation for several shareholders with e-Residency
If you want to add multiple shareholders, the incorporation will be done right during the call with our client manager. Adding new members will cost you €100 for each of them because the post-incorporation process of adding new shareholders is more complex. If this is your path, choose "incorporation with Digital ID", and other shareholders will be added during the next steps.
3) Incorporation without any Digital ID
This path is more expensive and long because it requires notary services, extra labor-intensive operations, and time for e-Residency obtaining.
After you've chosen a suitable incorporation way, fill in the information regarding your company:
Company Name
Indicate the name of your future company, if the one you want is already taken, our system will let you know that, as we automatically check the availability through the Estonian Company Registry. But this doesn't mean that the court will certainly approve this name. If we'll have concerns about your company's name, our client manager will contact you on the matter of the its modification.
Company Phone
Enter the phone number of your company. Please take into account if you are incorporating a company with e-Residency, the phone number should coincide with the phone number tied to your e-Residency card or Digital ID.
Main Field of Activity
During this step, you will need to choose one of the fields of activities that are listed in the official list. Here you can scroll the list or just start typing the name of the needed field of activity. Your company may have up to 10 fields of activity identified. In order to proceed with the incorporation, you are required to choose at least one. If you are not sure which one describes your business activities best, please address your question.
Activity Code
After that, you will need to choose a 5-digit activity code that describes your company's activities best. Again, you can always consult with us about choosing one.
NB! The default type of a company is PLC (known as OÜ in Estonia). So if you want to incorporate other types of companies, please, contact us directly and we'll take care of it. Note also that the minimum share capital in Estonia is 2500 EUR. It is possible to defer the payment of share capital into the future. However, when doing so, all the founders of the company will be held personally liable for the deferred amount.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes, at this stage your company's information and the choice about incorporation way can be changed or completed later. And don't forget to verify your email :)
Step 3: Fill In Information About Shareholders and Directors
After providing basic information about your future company, it's time to fill in information about shareholders and directors of a company. Notice that this is among the most important steps, as documents regarding your company will be based on the information provided here.
During this step, you will need to fill in contact information, roles in the company, detailed addresses, and other legal information for each shareholder/director. In case of incorporation without an e-Residency, please, prepare your passport as we will require its number and issuance date.
Notice, any Estonian company must have at least one Director and one Shareholder. If you are the sole owner of the company, that means by default you have a role of Shareholder and Director and 100% ownership of shares. However, if your company has more than one member, you can distribute these roles and shares among them. In this case, please return to the first card and update your role and the number of shares after creating other members' cards.
Note that if you've chosen the incorporation with e-Residency, choose your type of Digital ID at the bottom of the form and input your personal ID code instead of the passport information (NB! A code of E-Residency and most Digital IDs consists of 11 digits, not 5 that is a popular misconception).
The good news is that Enty can easily open you a company for several members. In this case, all of the members must have their own e-Residency cards or Digital IDs. This will cost you an extra €100 for each new member because the post-incorporation process of adding new shareholders is more complex. To make this happen, just press the button "Add Shareholder/Director" and provide us with information about another shareholder.
How to Reset an Application and Start From Scratch
If something doesn't feel right or you've made a mistake somewhere, you can easily reset your incorporation application and start from scratch. For example, to change the way of incorporation from 'with e-Residency' to 'without e-Residency'. Let's see on the gif how to make this happen.
Step 4: Choose and Purchase the Incorporation Package
Now it's time to choose the company maintenance plan. Here you choose between Lite, Standard, Pro, or e-Commerce plans based on the needs of your company. Note that you cannot skip this step because in Estonia you're obliged to have a Virtual office (legal address and contact person) — this service is included in all our paid packages.
In addition to Virtual office, you can obtain VAT, OSS, EORI, IBAN, use a bunch of helpful guides, and manage other business processes under a single subscription! If you want also to automate your accounting with Enty, choose Standard, Pro or e-Commerce subscription.
After that, check out that everything you've chosen on the previous steps is correct, and then complete the payment. After the payment is successfully handled, you'll see a success window. Congrats! You are one step closer to the end!
Step 5: Compliance Process
We also have to ascertain Estonian authorities that you are not a part of sanctions lists, politically exposed person, or known to be involved in criminal activities. Here is how it works. You'll just take a picture of yourself with your documents to verify your identity on a special website. It's very easy and takes just 5 minutes. Nevertheless, this step is a must — we won't be able to incorporate you a company without compliance (anyway, you'll have to go through this step further during opening your bank account).
During the incorporation with Digital ID, compliance will be done after the verification of your identity. We'll send you a special link and you'll complete this step in several minutes.
Step 6: A Final Leap
In case of incorporation with e-Residency, all that's left to do is to verify your identity using one of the Digital IDs. First, you need to authentificate your ID card using PIN1, just fill in codes needed for a certain Digital ID.
After this step is successfully completed, you need to sign documents using PIN2. In the special window, download and check the documents you're going to sign, and if everything is OK, complete the signing in several seconds. Soon, we'll send you a link for compliance (check the previous step). And that's all, your job is done — we've got your docs and sent them to the register.
Usually, incorporation takes no more than one business day but our client team is always keeping in touch to answer all questions and handle all issues. When your company is up and running, you'll be notified by our managers.
In case of incorporation without e-Residency, you have to go through more steps. First, you should download all documents that we've generated for your company and explore our step-by-step instructions on what to do with these docs. Please download all documents, check that everything is correct and proceed to the next step.
After that, you should print these documents, notarize and apostille them by the Ministry of External Affairs in English. Otherwise, the translation will cost extra and the incorporation process will take longer. Our manager will help you with this operation. Please notice that an apostille is not required for citizens of Belgium, Ireland, Italy, France, Denmark, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Poland.
After completing this procedure, please send a photo or a copy of the documents to our team for review. If everything is OK, we will greenlight sending these docs to us by courier. If you are struggling with the process of receiving an apostille for your document, contact us and we will provide you with assistance on this matter.
Step 7: Send the Certified Papers to Us
only for incorporation without e-Residency
When needed documents are notarized and apostilled, you should send them to us using any courier service such as DHL, FedEx (please, don't send the docs via usual postal service, pigeon mail, etc).
Feel free to contact us wherever you want, your personal manager will help you with every problem. During the incorporation, you will have a call and a chat with our manager regarding your future company.
Step 8: Wait For a Little and Get Your Company Incorporated
only for incorporation without e-Residency
Previous steps implementation takes just a few days (with digital ID a few minutes) and after we receive the documents, your job is done. Enty will take care of the rest.
Resume
So, as you've seen, the incorporation process is quite simple and straightforward. We've simplified and automated everything as far as we could and made the simplest interface for your sake. The incorporation with Enty is fast, cheap, and highly personalized. All process long you will be kept in touch with your personal manager who will help you with any problem regarding your company. Our constant support and assistance is among the main reasons why our customers trust us the most :)
Incorporate your Estonian company with Enty quickly and explore our other solutions: control panel, accounting, banking, etc.
