INDONESIA • FOUNDER TASK LIST
Steps to Register a Company in Indonesia: A Task List from Name to Legal Approval
Give every incorporation task an owner, a dependency and an acceptance document.
Register a conventional Indonesian PT by confirming the founders and activity, securing the company name, preparing the supporting evidence, executing the establishment deed and completing the notary-led AHU application. The endpoint is the legal-entity approval, with the deed and company particulars reconciled. An NIB, tax setup and permission to operate belong to subsequent workstreams.
Use roughly two to four weeks after acceptance of complete documents as HSJGlobal’s general planning benchmark for straightforward registration. This is not a government deadline. Overseas document preparation, signing problems or corrections can extend the project, while operational licences and bank onboarding require separate scheduling.
Key takeaways
- Agree the ownership and intended activity before committing the name and deed, so later licensing work starts from a viable entity.
- An open document task needs a named producer; “the agent is handling it” does not identify who can supply a foreign shareholder’s authority evidence.
- The notary’s retained supporting documents and the files delivered to the founders serve different custody purposes.
- Close each task against its output and keep later tax, OSS and banking work visible after legal approval.
Confirm the founders and activity before assigning tasks
Choose the legal route from the intended ownership and business model. This task list concerns a conventional PT, including a PT PMA where foreign investment is involved. A simplified one-person company has its own eligibility and application route, while a representative office is not the same operating company. Resolve the entity choice before treating the notary’s document list as final.
Write down the shareholders, share proportions, intended services or products, business location and proposed directors and commissioners. Check the activity against the applicable foreign-investment and licensing framework. The point of this task is to avoid completing incorporation efficiently for a structure that cannot support the planned operation.
Use the wider requirements for registering a company in Indonesia to establish the base entity work. Then give one person responsibility for maintaining the incorporation task board and another, where appropriate, authority to approve company particulars. Coordination and legal approval do not have to sit with the same individual.
Secure the name and keep the approval evidence
Provide the notary with the intended company name and sensible alternatives. Ask the notary to check the current name-use requirements and availability through AHU before the final deed is prepared. A domain name, an overseas group name or a brand used commercially does not establish availability as the Indonesian legal-entity name.
The official incorporation workflow starts its company data process with the name. Record the exact spelling approved for legal use and preserve the related reference. Resolve punctuation or wording discrepancies before shareholders sign; the name should not drift between the instruction sheet, deed and application.
For difficult naming questions, identify the specific name approval requirements and rejection issues rather than repeatedly proposing cosmetic variations. The task closes when the notary has evidence of the accepted name and confirms how it will be used in the incorporation. Brand or trademark protection remains a separate consideration.
Assign the missing founder tasks
Use the shareholder profile, activity and name options to identify what must be supplied before drafting.
Assemble the evidence with named document owners
Article 6 of Minister of Law Regulation 49 of 2025 lists supporting materials for the conventional PT route. These include the establishment documentation, capital evidence, address evidence, relevant declarations and beneficial-owner documentation. It also distinguishes documents that the notary retains. Ask the notary to convert those requirements into a list specific to your founders and transaction.
| Task owner | Evidence to produce or approve | Acceptance before signing |
|---|---|---|
| Each individual founder | Identity details and any required signing authorization | Names and identity particulars agree with the draft and authority is supported. |
| Each corporate founder | Corporate existence and authority documents for its investment and representative | The notary confirms the required form, authentication and translation for the source jurisdiction. |
| Founders and company officers | Agreed shares, capital, address and required declarations | The proposed evidence route is valid for the actual transaction and signatories. |
| Directors and beneficial owner | Applicable beneficial-owner authorization, declaration and consent | The identified person and supporting ownership chain are consistent. |
For money contributions, the regulation recognizes specified forms of capital evidence, including a bank document or the prescribed joint declaration. Other contribution forms have their own treatment. Do not confuse a permitted incorporation evidence format with proof accepted for every later purpose. A bank or licensing reviewer may ask different questions, and a declaration must accurately describe the underlying facts.
Track the producer, required form, requested date and acceptance result for every outstanding item. “Passport received” is insufficient if the copy cannot identify the signer or the name differs from the proposed deed. Prepare foreign-document authentication and translation in parallel with name and commercial-scope discussions where that is practical.
Execute the final establishment deed with supported authority
Give the notary one agreed instruction set and ask for the final draft before execution. Check the legal name, domicile, business objects, capital provisions, share allocation, appointments and signing arrangements. Make sure all founders understand the choices that affect control and future decision-making; a filing service does not substitute for their agreement.
Confirm who will appear or execute through a representative, and how any overseas signing will be handled. The notary should verify the authority and acceptable form for the specific act. A person who coordinates documents is not automatically authorized to bind a founder. Resolve that issue before booking a signing date or sending original documents.
After execution, identify the final deed date and number and distinguish the notary’s original minute from the copy to be supplied to the company. This task closes with an executed instrument and a clear record of document custody. A circulated draft with a proposed deed number does not establish that signing occurred.
Authorize the electronic application and official payment
Articles 3 and 5 of the current establishment regulation place the conventional PT application through the notary and the electronic legal-entity administration system, SABH. Supply the authorization required for that route and approve the application particulars against the executed deed. The notary’s professional account should remain under the notary’s control.
Arrange the official payment required for the transaction and retain its billing and receipt references separately from the professional service invoice. Ask the filer to identify the application reference once the submission has been made. Payment and submission are different task outputs; neither should disappear behind the single status “in progress.”
Record the declarations completed for the application and the evidence on which they are based. If a field is wrong, correct the supported source or the entry through the appropriate process. Do not authorize submission with a known material error on the assumption that the company can fix it cheaply later.
Check readiness for notarial submission
Confirm the signed evidence and agreed particulars before the application is finalized.
Collect and check the legal approval delivered through SABH
Article 7 provides for the legal-entity establishment decree to be issued and communicated electronically through SABH to the notary. Obtain the delivered decree and the company’s deed copy. Compare the relevant company and deed references before accepting the handover, and preserve the native electronic files and available authentication details.
The regulation’s issuance mechanism should not be presented as a guarantee that the entire setup takes one day. Founder preparation, execution, data accuracy and the point at which an application is properly received still matter. Use the general planning benchmark to organize resources, then manage the actual dependencies through the task board.
The incorporation endpoint is legal approval, not a promise that every operational approval has also been obtained. Note separately whether tax-registration information, an OSS account, NIB or other work has been delivered under the agreed scope. Assign the remaining tasks without changing the meaning of the legal-entity result.
Recover a blocked task without duplicating the project
When the project stalls, identify the first task without an accepted output. An unavailable name goes back to name selection. Missing corporate authority goes to the founder that must approve it. A difference between the deed and electronic data goes to the notary for the correct route. A technical portal error needs its exact message and support reference.
Do not start another incorporation application simply because a coordinator cannot explain the current one. Obtain the existing references and determine whether the task is incomplete, rejected or already completed with a delivery problem. Keep the corrective action on the original task board so the company can later reconstruct what happened.
Set an internal follow-up date and identify the event required to restart the next task. Internal targets are useful for accountability; statutory or system deadlines must be taken from the current rule and the relevant starting event. Preserve the basis whenever the notary identifies such a deadline.
Hand over legal approval with the next task owners named
Close the incorporation tasks when the name, executed deed, application and legal approval can be traced as one coherent sequence. Keep the founder approvals, document-custody list and official references in the company’s own files. Unexplained discrepancies remain open tasks even when most of the package has arrived.
Then name the people responsible for tax configuration, OSS licensing, banking and any sector or premises requirements. Those teams should receive the accepted company particulars and relevant documents, with their own completion tests. Legal approval is a clean handover point when everyone can see both what has been achieved and what the next operation still requires.
Prepare the legal-approval handover
List the official outputs received and the separate workstreams still waiting to start.
Frequently asked questions
Can an employee produce every founder document?
An employee can coordinate collection, but corporate approvals, identity evidence and signatures must come from the people or bodies with authority to provide them. Assign production and approval separately.
Do all documents go into the same online upload?
No. The procedural rules distinguish the electronic application and documents retained by the notary. Ask for a transaction-specific custody and submission list rather than assuming every item is uploaded in the same way.
Can we prepare bank onboarding while incorporation is pending?
You can assemble background information and discuss requirements, but the bank controls its own eligibility and document acceptance. Do not make its account-opening decision a prerequisite for every incorporation task without checking the actual evidence route.
What if the business model changes before signing?
Reassess the activity, ownership eligibility and proposed articles before executing the deed. A brief return to a planning task is preferable to incorporating an entity on facts the founders no longer intend to use.
