Starting a business in 2025 and the order to do things in

The paperwork for a new business is not hard. The order you do it in is what catches people, because nearly every step depends on the one before it, and doing them back to front means paying for some things twice.

Start with the structure. Most small businesses begin either as a sole trader or as a company. As a sole trader you and the business are the same legal person and the income goes in your personal tax return. A company is a separate legal entity with its own tax return, its own obligations and a yearly review with ASIC. It costs more to run. It also keeps the business apart from you.

Why first? Because your ABN is issued to the entity. A sole trader ABN and a company ABN are different numbers, and the bank account and often the domain name follow from that. Change your mind six months in and you redo the lot. This is general information only, and an accountant can tell you which structure suits your situation.

Next comes the ABN. For a sole trader you will want your tax file number, your personal details and a description of what the business does. A company is registered first and then gets its own ABN. We can apply for an ABN for you.

Then the business name, if you need one. Sarah Nguyen trading as Sarah Nguyen does not have to register anything extra. Sarah Nguyen trading as Northside Garden Care does, and that name goes on ASIC's register. A company trading under its exact company name is fine without one, but any other name has to be registered.

You need an ABN before a business name can be registered, which is why the ABN sits ahead of it. The name also has to be free. ASIC will not register one that is identical to, or too close to, a name already on the register.

With the name registered, buy the matching domain. A .com.au needs an Australian presence, which your ABN or ACN gives you, and the domain has to match your name or be closely connected to your business. A registered business name makes that connection easy to show.

The mistake we see most

Someone pays a designer for a logo, buys a domain, orders a box of business cards and sets up an Instagram account. Then they go to register the business name and find it is taken, or close enough to an existing one that ASIC refuses it.

Everything they paid for now carries a name they cannot trade under.

So check the name before you spend a cent on anything with it printed on it. If the name you want is gone, you have lost nothing but an idea, and the second choice is often better anyway once you have had a week to think about it.

None of this has to happen in one week. Some people sort out the structure and ABN in January, sit on a shortlist of names for a while, and register the name once they are sure. The domain and branding can follow. The one thing to avoid is committing money to a name before it is yours to use.

Once the structure is decided, the registrations that follow are all things we do. For the name, you search whether it is available on our business names page, give us the holder's details and your ABN, choose one year or three, and pay. We then lodge the registration with ASIC. If you are going the company route, you check the company name, enter the directors, shareholders and registered office on our form and pay, we lodge it with ASIC, and you get the company's ACN. An ABN application can be added to that same order.

After that, the domain. We register .com.au, .au and .com names on our domains page, and web hosting with cPanel and email on Australian servers, on quarterly or yearly plans. Domains, renewals and hosting all sit in your Registry dashboard, so you are not chasing logins across three providers.

If you are not sure whether a name will pass, or which order suits your plans, our local team can go through it with you on 1300 070 000, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Melbourne time.