Proper registration is one of the important things many small business owners neglect to their detriment. This is because a good number of them think it’s not important and some others who think it’s important assume it will be a very difficult task. Why bother registering with CAC? The importance of registering a business can never be over-emphasized. • For one, when it comes to doing serious business, many agencies will never take you serious if your company is not registered. •Secondly, you might have to discover that people and that includes you and I, feel more comfortable paying for services and products into a corporate account with the name of an organisation than paying into Individual account.You may have missed an important sale because when your prospect made up his mind to buy, the account number you sent him was an individual account in your name.He thought it too risky because it was a sizable amount involved. People feel if the account is in a corporate name, the organization can be traced if the transaction went foul. If you register your company, you can use the documents to open a corporate account with less stress. • Moreover, if you have a business idea and you go ahead and register the business name, even if you spend 2 years perfecting the plan and raising the capital, for it, those 2 years from when the business was registered can count for you as years of experience. A little about CAC: The Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) was established by the Companies and Allied matters act, which was promulgated in 1990 to regulate the formation and management of companies in Nigeria. The CAC is in charge of registering businesses in Nigeria. They have offices all over Nigeria and in the concluding part of this post, you’ll see the addresses of their offices in different locations in Nigeria, so finding the one nearest to you should be very simple. Registering a Business name If you want to register a business name, you can do it in 2 ways. •One is to engage the services of a lawyer and he will get it done for you with about N10,000. The trouble is that the next time you want to register another business name, you will have to pay him another N10,000 If you are a serial entrepreneur with many business ideas flowing in you, you will be spending too much money for this when you can actually spend less by understanding the information I am going to share with you here. The second way to get your business name registered is to do it yourself. Yes, you can walk into any branch of the corporate affairs commission and you will get your business registered. The trouble with this is that if you do not know the secrets of going about it, you will spend months trying to get your business name registered. A friend of mine spent over 6 months trying to register his business name because he worked through an agent who really wasted his time and messed him up real bad. For the sake of clarity, This guide shows the process of how to get your business name registered and not a limited liability company or an NGO. Getting started: Once you are ready to register your business name with the corporate affairs commission, the first thing you should do is to go to their office nearest to you. •Walk in to the nearest branch to you and ask for name reservation form or you can do that online . It costs just Five Hundred Naira only. You will be given a receipt and a form. On the form, you will be asked to fill in a few details. Details like. Your Name • Your Address • Your Desired Business Names • A Space To Fill The Type Of Business You Want to Register (Choose Enterprises/Business Name) You will be required to choose two business names. The reason is that if one is not available, they can reserve the other for you. If none of them is available, you will need to do it all over again. You will have to pay the N500 again and you will have to wait for the result. How long does it take to reserve a name with CAC? when you ask for a name reservation, it takes about 2 days before the results are returned. It is sometimes as fast as one week or 2 days but it generally takes 2 days. So How Will You Prevent That From Happening To You? Good question! What you need to do is to choose a name no one else would have chosen. Now, you have to be creative and ingenious about it. If you choose just any name, I can assure you someone has registered it. Don’t even think about registering names like these… • Obyno Enterprises • Prosperity Ventures • Good Hope Enterprises • Adamu Hassan Ventures • Wealth Resources Consulting If you choose names like these, then there is a high probability that they have already been taken by someone else and as an entrepreneur, you don’t have time to waste experimenting on new names at every 2 week interval.Having sorted out the name issue and having submitted your form, you will have to wait till the result comes out. There is nothing you can do about that. You just have to wait. All I’ll advise you to do is to get ready so when the results come out, you will be prepared to register immediately. What you need Prepare _ 2 passport photographs _ Stapler (believe it or not, some CAC branches do not have) _ The details of a partner (you cannot register alone, add someone… anyone) _ The partner’s photographs. _ Your address (you can use your home address) _ Telephone number (use GSM) _ Local government area and a few other requirements. Why be prepared ahead of time? Majority of upstart entrepreneurs will fold their hands while the 2 weeks passes but I advise you to work while you wait. Start gathering the materials you need one by one. Why? You see, your name reservation is just for a number of days, you have to register properly before the grace period expires and someone else can take up that name. We want to get your business name registered in record time so we want to move faster than normal. When name reservation results come out, what people normally do is to start studying the new documents they are provided with to fill.If you prepare early, you will get your registration done once the results are out. According to the CAC Website, Fees for some services include: Registration of Business Name =N=10,000.00 Change of Name =N=2,000.00 Business Name Search =N=500.00. Change of Partnership =N=1,000.00 Change of Address =N=1,000.00 Certified True Copy of a Business Name Certificate =N=1,000.00 Filing of Annual returns =N=300.00 Business Name Registration Form =N=250.00 In the concluding part of this post, you will learn about: Objects allowed by CAC CAC offices in Nigeria Visit CAC Website (http://new.cac.gov.ng/) for more details]]>