Setting up and running a small company, with farang work permit. Which documents do you check and keep yourself?

[OneMoreFarang]

I am in the process of setting up a Thai Ltd. company. Eventually I will be 49% shareholder and director or the company, with work permit.

My long-term Thai gf is the second shareholder. I trust her.

(Now a company needs only two shareholders. That changed over time.)

 

I (think I) have a good accountant, who does all the initial work to setup the company, VAT, bank and many more things. There are many many documents to sign, obviously all in Thai. It's not easy to keep the overview.

I asked the accountant, and she told me she keeps the original documents, and she scans them, and she keeps copies of the scans in the cloud. So it's unlikely that documents get lost.

 

The question here for me is, which documents, or scans of documents, should I keep myself. I guess there are some important documents. Which?

I don't want to keep hundreds of documents without knowing what is what. And I understand that my accountant doesn't translate everything for me.

 

Which documents do you keep and/or check?

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

I have a DBD registered company. I find it very hard keeping abreast of what it what, things that are needed for this that and the other. Just running the business takes all of my time, I have no inclination or spare capacity to put sticky labels on documents. . . I keep up to date PDF scans of everything (with Ingrish file names), useful for Paypal company accounts etc etc.

. . . but it sounds like you have the right idea i.e. someone you trust. In my case that's my wife and daughter, and my son when he's old enough.

 

You'll need the company registration document for pretty much everything. The company rubber stamp is a big deal in Thailand too. As you're just setting up, you might want to investigate the availability of your .co.th domain name (in Thailand only available to registered companies, emails from a .co.th domain go a long way towards credibility, where most SMEs still use Hotmail).

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

[OneMoreFarang]

31 minutes ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

The company rubber stamp is a big deal in Thailand too.

My accountant told me the rubber stamp is not necessary (anymore) and she advised me not to have one. So I have no stamp. 

[OneMoreFarang]

33 minutes ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

As you're just setting up, you might want to investigate the availability of your .co.th domain name (in Thailand only available to registered companies, emails from a .co.th domain go a long way towards credibility, where most SMEs still use Hotmail).

Thanks

Before I registered the company, I made sure the .com domain was available, and I registered it already.

I also checked if the co.th domain is available. I still have to register that.

I guess by now I have enough company documents to register it.

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

Company registration document is all you need for the .co.th, use the THNIC website.

 

37 minutes ago, OneMoreFarang said:

My accountant told me the rubber stamp is not necessary (anymore) and she advised me not to have one. So I have no stamp. 

In practice you'll find people still expect to see it. It costs effectively nothing to have one.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

[OneMoreFarang]

1 hour ago, Led Lolly Yellow Lolly said:

In practice you'll find people still expect to see it. It costs effectively nothing to have one.

Can you tell me more about that?

In which situations do people still expect to see a stamp?

And what do they do if there is no stamp (if you know)?

[Led Lolly Yellow Lolly]

To be honest it's news to me that company stamp is no longer required. I had to register my company seal when the business was registered at the DBD. Thereafter your rubber stamp is a kind of legal fingerprint that ties any document to your company. This could be anything from taxation to customer invoices (my invoices are generated in PDF with my company seal digitally added).

 

Personally I just like the satisfying feel of stamping my logo on stuff to satiate my desire to be officious from time to time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Led Lolly Yellow Lolly

[FriendlyFarang]

12 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

Which documents do you keep and/or check?

As director of a company you should understand everything, keep everything and check everything.

You are liable if anything is off. You shouldn't sign anything if you don't understand it.

 

Every accountant tells you that they do everything for you, know everything etc. in reality most have little knowledge and do a lot of stuff wrong.

How can you judge if yours is good if you don't understand it? You probably remember my reply from the other thread, where you also posted, where I wrote about my experience with my accountants already....

 

I regularly have to explain to accountants of other companies how to correctly issue a tax invoice. When they send me an incorrect tax invoice and I contact them, they usually tell me that this is how they do their taxes and that they can't issue me one meeting my demands. Then I explain to them that they have to issue it to me this way because that's according to the law, and I give them some time to research this. Then usually a few days later I get a call back from them or the manager, saying that there was a "misunderstanding" and the correct tax invoice is on it's way to me. So they have been doing their taxes wrong for years, until I pointed it out to them...

 

You should pay taxes, social security etc. directly to the relevant government agencies by yourself, not through the accountant. I know of stories where people paid through the accountant, and the accountant told them it's 100k, but actually it was just 50k, and the accountant pocketed the other 50k. Or the accountant didn't transfer anything at all, and then a year later the company suddenly got the bill.

Does your accountant do his own taxes correctly? After the initial setting up of the company, does your accountant issue the bills for his services to your company? Are 3% withholding tax deducted?

 

It's the first time that I hear that a company doesn't have a stamp. Usually everything official you do in the name of the company requires your signature + stamp.

After looking it up on Google: Yes, it's possible to not have a stamp. But be prepared to do some explaining every time you do something official, because they will always ask for the stamp, and in many cases you have to explain to them why you don't have one, they have to confirm this with their supervisor etc.

When you send an invoice to a customer they might also contact you because you "forgot" to stamp the invoice and they want this corrected.

 

[XGM]

Keep all the incorporation documents, company's "nangsue lablong", VAT registration and basically every document apart from ongoing day to day operations. Originals. Make your own backups. With some initial assistance, it is really not that hard to know what's what.

I also recommend going over the monthly documents as well - withholding tax forms etc. Those forms may appear illegible but they are the same each month so you only need to learn the structure once.