creating a company

So I’ve started a company!!! Hippie.  If it’s not clear, the above logo is the one from my little company!

I built it from scratch, though I’m only the associate. But it will help me publish my books. For anyone living in France, you will know that actually overcoming the red tape in this country is an achievement in itself.

So here’s what I did to create a SASU. There are numerous sites that will tell you what to do. And more often than not, they’ll tell you lies.  Well, not lies exactly, but they will ommit a few things. To create a SASU you must have a capital stored in a bank, to prove that you have the money to start a company. Legally a SASU will start at 1€. But as this is the amount you will use to work with, I don’t advise starting with that little money.

Now all those sites tell you have to put it in a bank, and those banks of course make you pay for the privilege of starting a company. And it is a hefty sum, around 60€ a month. Now when you start a company, you don’t necessarily have that much money to spend on a bank account. I certainly did not.

So I looked for online banks. And OMG. They’re just impossible to work with. I tried to different ones, and every time they said I hadn’t send them the proper papers, but then when I wanted to upload the papers their site couldn’t work. So my advice is stay away from online banks.

So what do you do, you make ask? Well here is a little trick, that no sites talk about. You have the « caisse des dépôts et consignation » that will hold your capital for free, until you have set up the rest of your company. Of course, if you go to their site, it will not show. You need to type in Google « Dépôt de capital banque des dépôts et consignation » and this will get you to the right page.

But the difficulties do not stop there. To do that with the banque des dépôts you need a chèque de banque. That is a check that is signed off from the official associate’s bank. Here again online banks won’t help because you need a proof with name and bank account number that they will not deliver. So I opened a bank account in a normal bank. They told me they could deliver the paper. Of course, I waited 15 days, and at the time COVID was making a swift come back, so I was afraid everything would be on lockdown again. So I had to harass them, and manage to talk to a gullible front desk guy who put a stamp on a paper, though I believe he was not really supposed to do that.

After that, you need an official company bank account for the banque des dépôts to give you back your money. By that time, your company has been officially created with all the papers done at the Greffe and so an online bank will do fine, as they are not responsible for your company status. They’re just there to collect the cash, and that they love. I chose Qonto as it was the cheapest one, for my needs. Anyways, I have now this company to help me publish my books. And I’m so happy. The adventure starts now.