Choose a Business Plan
The business plan is an important first step in every business start-up. This is where you are forced to think about things you didn’t even think about, such as starting capital, market, competition, etc. If you have to be picky consulting company and consulting firm do not really mean exactly the same thing. If you run your consulting company in the form of a limited company, a full-fledged consulting company, you must acquire share capital first.
If you want an even shorter starting distance, you can instead register a consulting firm in the form of a sole proprietorship. We recommend a limited company, as it is its own legal entity. Then it will be easier for you to, for example, separate the company’s finances from your own. There may also be benefits in terms of taxation. There is actually a way to skip the previous point entirely.
Instead of starting a company or sole proprietorship, you can become self-employed instead. As a self-employed person, you are technically employed by a so-called self-employment company. It is via this that you send your invoices to the customer, in exchange for a percentage fee of the invoice amount.
This is the price tag for the self-employment company to handle the administration and pay you a salary. Perhaps the biggest advantage of this is that you don’t have to book and that you can take on assignments when you feel like it. Self-employment can be well suited if you want to test it out on a small scale before you want to invest a little more for real.
The advantage of instead starting a real company is that you can deduct vat on purchases for companies. If you want to start and run a limited company, you can also scale up the business because you can hire. When you start a real company, it also becomes easier with the legal aspects, for example when you have to write consultancy agreements more on this later. As a self-employed person, you are neither an employee nor a self-employed person, but a kind of hybrid. Last but not least! Many of your customers are used to doing business with other companies, not with self-employed people. This can make it easier for you to sign new consulting assignments!
However, one point you cannot skip is this. Of course, in some cases the transition from employee to consultant takes place by simply starting to consult for your employer instead of being employed by the employer many consulting companies have been started this way over the years.