Dubious invoicing: after the Commercial Registry entry, I received more invoices for registry entries etc. Do I have to settle them?
Upon foundation of your business including the entry in the Commercial Registry you (respectively your business) will receive one invoice from the cantonal Commercial Registry Office. The Office charges you for the costs of the entry etc. Additionally you will receive an invoice from the service provider who supported you during the foundation (e.g. STARTUPS.CH, trustee, notary, or similar service providers). Every now and then we receive enquiries from disoriented clients who receive unrequested additional invoices.
Basically we recommend: do not settle the invoice before you are 100% sure that it actually comes from the Commercial Registry or from STARTUPS.CH.
If you are not sure, please contact the Commercial Registry or us.
This is how dispatchers of this kind of invoices frequently act: every change in the Commercial Registry is published in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce. Unsound businesses exploit this fact and use this publications to obtain the addresses of the newly registered businesses. Subsequently, they send invoices (which are often very similar to the official ones) to the start-up company. The dispatcher normally designates the bill as a simple offer to register the business in a (normally useless) private registry, but, for a non-professional, this is very difficult to spot at first glance. This is why we suggest you to take a close look.
You can confidently discard any invoice concerning the foundation of your business which does not come neither from the Commercial Registry Office nor from STARTUPS.CH. There is no obligation to register in a further registry. In its customer correspondence, STARTUPS.CH always warns against possible dubious invoicing.
Recently, the SECO (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) succeded in the Swiss Federal Supreme Court in a suit filed against a business which operates a dubious address registry (see the SECO news). We hope that this sentence will not remain a unique event.
Preferably you establish the foundation of your company with STARTUPS.CH. STARTUPS.CH will provide you with professional guidance before and after the foundation.
Here you will be able to apply for a counselling interview and to request free documentation.
