Business setup
Business setup for freelancers
Getting registered as a freelancer is mostly a question of working out which registrations your work actually needs. BuildWright works that out with you, prepares the applications, files them, and hands back the certificates with the follow-on dates marked.
Documentation
Prepared to the portal's current format
Filing
Through the relevant government portal
Handover
Certificates, logins, and what falls due next
- Developers, designers, writers, editors, marketers and consultants invoicing clients under their own name.
- Freelancers who have started billing clients outside India and want the export paperwork right from the first invoice.
- Independent professionals whose enterprise clients have started asking for registration certificates during vendor onboarding.
The proprietorship question, answered honestly
There is no central filing that creates a sole proprietorship. You trade under your own PAN, and the things people call proprietorship registration are separate downstream registrations. We tell you which of them your work needs before anyone charges you for a bundle of all of them.
Udyam registration
The current MSME registration, done on the government portal against your PAN and Aadhaar. It is what a buyer's vendor form is usually asking for, and it is what carries the delayed-payment protection into your invoices.
GST registration, when it genuinely applies
Registration is compulsory for some categories of supplier and optional for others. We work out which side of that line your work falls on, and we say so plainly when you do not need to register yet.
The Letter of Undertaking for foreign clients
Exporting services has its own treatment under GST, and the Letter of Undertaking is the filing that treatment usually turns on. We prepare it, file it, and diarise the renewal so an invoice never goes out against a lapsed one.
Scoping call
What you sell, who pays you, and where they are. That decides the whole list.
The registration list
You get a written list of what applies, what does not, and what can wait. Anything we recommend against comes with the reason.
Documentation
Applications and supporting records prepared against the current format of each portal.
Filing
We file, track the application, and answer any query the department raises.
Handover
Certificates, portal credentials, and a plain list of what falls due after this and when.
Do I need to register a proprietorship?
No central law has a filing that creates a sole proprietorship. You are one the moment you start trading under your own PAN. What people mean by registering a proprietorship is obtaining downstream registrations such as Udyam, GST or a Shops and Establishment registration, and which of those apply depends on what you do and where.
Is Udyam registration the same as MSME registration?
They are names for stages of the same regime. Udyam Registration is the current one and it replaced Udyog Aadhaar. If a form asks for your MSME registration, your Udyam certificate is what it wants.
Do I have to register for GST as a freelancer?
It depends on what you supply, who you supply it to, and where they are located. Some categories of supplier must register regardless of size, others only once they cross a prescribed limit. We confirm which applies to you against the provision currently in force rather than working off a figure someone quoted in a forum.
What changes when my clients are outside India?
Export of services sits under its own GST treatment, and the Letter of Undertaking is the filing most freelancers in that position need in place before invoicing. Getting it wrong tends to surface later as a tax cost on income you had already treated as yours.
Do you give tax or legal advice?
We prepare documentation and handle filings. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Where a question needs a qualified professional's opinion, we say so and we tell you what kind.
Not sure which of these you actually need?
Tell us what you sell and who pays you. We will come back with the list, including the registrations we think you can skip.
Background reading: the payment deadline Udyam registration carries and sole proprietor, OPC or LLP.