Philippines Company Registration Services: Scope, Fees and Handover

Define the endpoint before appointing a provider

Choose whether the provider is assessing a route, supporting SEC incorporation or separately coordinating readiness to operate. A company certificate does not close every operating workstream. The engagement should identify the proposed entity, business activity, ownership, capital assumptions, address and authorized representative before documents are finalized.

The underlying work in company registration in the Philippines includes resolving company structure and the incorporation record. A Philippine domestic corporation can have foreign shareholders; a foreign parent seeking a Philippine branch follows a different licensing route. Do not accept a domestic-company filing scope merely because the founders live overseas.

The live SEC eSPARC entry point offers OneSEC and Regular processing with ZERO integration through eSECURE and eSAP. The provider should identify the applicable route and who enters the data, checks the generated documents, authenticates them, pays the assessment and retrieves the issued record. The customer must approve the factual inputs and arrange the required signers.

Separate submission from approval, and incorporation from the later BIR, Barangay/LGU, sector and banking work that your activity may need. Record which of these are excluded and who takes them forward. There is no universal end-to-end delivery period for this combined work: plan from complete agreed inputs to the particular evidence bought, with authority review, corrections and external approvals separately identified.

Match the published service scope to your situation

Select the scope that resolves your current decision. These are HSJGlobal’s published one-time professional starting prices, checked October 30, 2026; they are not fixed all-in launch quotations. Each scope has four stated deliverables. A higher starting price does not mean that every item in a lower scope is automatically included.

Across these scopes, government assessments, taxes, notary/apostille, courier, registered address, LGU and BIR registration, sector licences, banking and ongoing compliance are excluded unless expressly included in the written quotation. VAT is not separately stated on the published price basis: obtain the billing-tax treatment in writing, rather than assuming either VAT-inclusive or VAT-free pricing. No automatic renewal price is published.

If needed, request separately priced additions for the excluded work and specify their outputs. Confirm whether corrections within the agreed facts are covered, how many review cycles are included, and what happens if the activity or ownership changes. These are engagement questions, not additional published inclusions. An initial conversation is free; approval by an authority, bank or third party is not guaranteed.

A usable budget keeps payments for professional work, government assessments and third-party services visible, while capital and operating cash remain separately planned company funds. The relationship below prevents an inexpensive-looking service line from being mistaken for all required cash.

Price the work without mixing the cash buckets

Compare quotations using the same entity, activity, capital basis, address and endpoint. Government disbursements should be reconciled against assessments and receipts, while a professional invoice should identify the agreed work. The minimum SEC illustration at the opening is only two components of a stock-company filing; capital-linked assessments can be higher.

The official SEC calculator supports the filing and legal research components. The BIR corporate registration checklist supports the COR stamp and invoicing distinction. BIR’s RMC 14-2024 stopped collection of the PHP 500 annual registration fee from January 22, 2024; do not carry that obsolete annual line into a new budget.

To separate government charges from your formation budget , retain a disbursement ledger showing payee, assessment reference, amount paid and receipt. For mixed currencies, retain separate SGD and PHP subtotals until the written billing or conversion basis is known; adding them directly would produce a meaningless total.

Build a handover acceptance register

Use the register below as proposed acceptance terms for the work you actually commission. It does not expand the published service menu. Acceptance evidence should be named before engagement, with a company recipient and a remedy for missing or inconsistent records. Mark excluded rows as assigned elsewhere, rather than silently treating them as completed.

The SEC Regular ZERO user guide describes payment confirmation, an electronic official receipt and document/certificate download. These support an evidence-based SEC handover, not a promise that every service engagement includes a successfully issued certificate. If approval is outstanding, agree how the provider will continue the purchased work and report the next event.

Where BIR registration is separately commissioned, require the actual COR or electronic COR and the agreed invoice and books arrangements, not only a TIN notification. The BIR checklist treats these as distinct requirements. For a permit, request the actual issued instrument and applicable conditions; a submitted form is evidence of submission only.

Control changes, access and unfinished work

Keep personal eSECURE credentials and one-time codes with the individual signer. SEC describes credentialed accounts and eSAP authentication as part of ZERO; a company-file handover is not permission to transfer another person’s identity. Agree authorized representative access through the applicable platform process, and test the company custodian’s legitimate ability to retrieve and retain the records.

Before accepting a transfer, inventory digital files and any originals by filename or document title, version, issuing body and custody location. Confirm which correspondence channel receives future notices. Record the provider’s continuing access, its purpose and when it should end; a departing provider should not remain the only person who knows an application reference or holds the issued files.

For a scope change, pause the affected submission and obtain written approval of the revised deliverables, price and dependencies. For a factual mismatch, identify the authoritative company instruction and the submitted version before agreeing a correction. Do not fix an issued record by editing the downloaded certificate. Preserve the original and arrange the appropriate authority process.

Use milestones tied to evidence: customer inputs accepted, documents approved, authentication completed, submission acknowledged and authority result received. Review BIR and local preparation for possible parallel work, but keep their completion tests separate. Ask for the next update date and escalation owner when a review or customer action is pending, rather than accepting a national launch-time guarantee.

Sign the handover only when the scope is evidenced

Accept the purchased scope when its promised outputs are present, internally consistent and usable by the named company custodian. Do not sign an unqualified completion statement for work that is still pending. A finished assessment may be accepted while incorporation has not begun; a completed SEC engagement may close while separately assigned operational work continues.

Return a defective handover with a specific missing record, mismatch or unassigned item and the agreed remedy. Where the business activity, ownership or capital assumptions have changed, escalate the scope before authorizing further filing. The practical next step is a dated acceptance register: accepted items, disputed items and excluded work, each with a responsible person and the next action.