Adding and changing business lines is one of the procedures that businesses wishing to expand their business need to carry out before operating in a new field. Therefore, businesses need to proactively carry out registration procedures with state agencies. To learn more about the procedures for adding business lines in 2024, please refer to the content of the article below.

1. What is a business line?

A business line can be simply understood as the fields that businesses choose to do business in according to the list issued by the state. These fields will be divided into main and related sub-fields that businesses can do business in. When registering a business, each business always needs to determine the fields that it will operate in when starting operations, so the choice of business line will depend on the will of the business owner.

Each individual and organization has the right to freely do business in fields that are not prohibited by law. However, each enterprise must ensure that it meets all business conditions as prescribed by the Investment Law 2020, ensuring that business conditions are maintained to maintain operations.

Currently, there are many conditional and non-conditional business lines. Conditional business lines are specific business lines related to national defense, national security, social order and safety, social ethics, and health. Therefore, conditional business lines must always comply with industry-specific conditions that enterprises must meet when choosing.

2. Procedures for adding business lines 2024

Adding business lines and changing business lines are two procedures of different nature for enterprises. Specifically:

– Adding business lines is a procedure performed by enterprises when they need to expand their business activities, adding one or more new business lines to their business registration certificate.

– Changing business lines is an administrative procedure performed by enterprises when they need to add or remove business lines in their personal business line certificate.

It can be seen that changing business lines has a more general concept than adding business lines, but basically the related procedures are quite similar in terms of working process and document preparation. The process of adding business lines will be carried out in the following steps:

Step 1: Prepare documents for adding business lines

First, the enterprise needs to determine whether the change in business lines is in the direction of adding business lines or removing business lines according to the needs of the enterprise. In case of adding business lines to the business registration, the enterprise needs to prepare the business line code to be added, in case of removing business lines, it will be necessary to list the business lines to be removed in the business registration. This pre-determination is essential for the enterprise to prepare before making changes or additions, along with finding the correct code for the change or addition that it wants to avoid confusion.

Step 2: Prepare a complete business line supplement file according to regulations

The file for adding or changing business lines includes the documents listed depending on each type of enterprise in the section below.

Step 3: Submit the application for additional business lines to the business registration office of the Department of Planning and Investment

After the application is prepared, the company will submit it online on the national information portal for appraisal. The appraisal process will be done online via an online link, which is convenient for checking whether the contents of the document are accurate and valid before submitting the hard copy to the Department of Planning and Investment. The enterprise has also saved a lot of travel time and costs for this work.

Step 4: Appraise the validity of the application for additional business lines

Within about 03 working days after receiving the application from the enterprise, the business registration office will appraise the content of the application according to the provisions of law. That is, within 3 working days, the results will be returned to the enterprise regarding the validity of the application.

Step 5: Issuing a certificate of business registration for the company

If the unit’s documents are valid, the specialist will require the enterprise to prepare a paper copy and submit it to the Business Registration Office – Department of Planning and Investment of the province or city where the unit is headquartered to issue a new business registration certificate. Therefore, if the documents are invalid, the enterprise must prepare them again and send them back to the Department for review. To speed things up, the enterprise can completely hire a specialized unit to do it for them.

3. Additional business line dossier

For additional business line dossiers, depending on the type of enterprise, the following detailed documents need to be prepared:

3.1 Additional business line dossiers for LLCs with 2 members

– 01 notice of change in business registration content according to the prescribed form.

– 01 decision and copy of the minutes of the meeting of the Board of Members with the change in the company’s charter.

– 01 copy of the following documents: Tax registration certificate, additional document updating business registration information (If the enterprise has been granted the above documents or documents of equivalent value)

– 01 Power of attorney (if an individual or organization authorizes an organization to perform);

– A legal copy of one of the personal identification documents of the person authorized to carry out the procedure (if any):

3.2 Documents to supplement business lines with a joint stock company

– 01 Notice of change of business lines according to the statutory form

– 01 decision and copy of the minutes of the General Meeting of Shareholders stating the content of the change in the Company’s Charter

– 01 Copy of the following documents: Investment certificate, tax registration certificate, Business registration information update supplement (If the enterprise has been granted the above documents or documents of equivalent value)

– 01 Power of attorney (if an individual or organization authorizes an organization to carry out the procedure) with a valid copy of one of the personal identification documents of the person authorized to carry out the procedure related to the document (if any);

3.3 Documents for adding business lines to a partnership

– 01 Notice of change of business lines according to the statutory form

– 01 Decision and copy of the minutes of the meeting of the partners clearly stating the changes in the company’s Charter

– 01 Copy of documents: Investment certificate, tax registration certificate, additional document updating business registration information (When the enterprise has been granted the above documents or documents of equivalent value)

– 01 Authorization letter (If an individual or organization authorizes an organization to perform);

– A legal copy of one of the personal identification documents of the authorized person to perform the procedures (if any);

3.4 Documents for adding business lines to a single-member LLC

– 01 Notice of adding business lines according to the statutory form

– 01 Decision and copy of the meeting minutes of the company owner stating the changes in the company’s Charter

– 01 Copy of documents: Investment certificate, tax registration certificate, additional document updating business registration information (When the enterprise has been granted the above documents or equivalent documents)

– 01 Authorization letter (if an individual or organization authorizes an organization to perform)

Thus, it can be seen that for each type of enterprise, the basic documents required are the notice of adding business lines according to regulations, the decision on the content of changing business lines, investment certificate, tax registration certificate, authorization letter when authorizing another person to perform.

4. Notes when adding business lines

During the process of completing procedures for adding business lines, enterprises also need to pay attention to the following issues to avoid errors in the process of completing procedures and preparing documents:

• During the process of preparing documents for adding business lines, the notice of change in business registration content is the most important document. When completing the notice form, it is necessary to follow the form prescribed by law and fill in all the information in the form correctly.
• It is necessary to note that the economic sector code is correct according to legal regulations. When recording the economic sector code in the file, enterprises record the level 4 sector code according to Decision No. 27/2018 QD-TTg. Checking and recording the correct business sector code is very important when preparing business registration documents to avoid unnecessary confusion.
• In particular, for conditional business lines, enterprises need to supplement documents and practice certificates when operating that sector code. For example, industries in the fields of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, law, etc. need to have relevant documents to qualify for business and practice. In addition, when changing or adding a business line, businesses need to carefully research whether the added business line has accompanying conditions or not and cite the items, articles, and clauses in the legal regulations for that business line.

Thus, it can be seen that the procedure for adding a business line in 2024 is quite simple, businesses need to focus on preparing complete documents according to regulations to have the documents approved, then carry out the procedure to submit to the Department of Planning and Investment. Business owners can completely hire a unit to carry out the above procedures on their behalf without spending much time preparing documents.

Above are the findings of Viet My Accounting on the Procedures for adding business lines 2024. Please contact VIET MY LAW AND ACCOUNTING immediately if you have any further questions about the process, procedures or documents that need to be prepared before adding business lines to your business registration.