Creating a company from a SIREN

Create a company from its French registration number and let Kapitable retrieve its legal details from the national registry. The shortest of the three creation routes, and the most reliable.

Overview

Kapitable offers three ways to create a company: from a SIREN, from a KBIS document, or by typing the details yourself. For a French company you can identify, the SIREN route is the one to prefer — it is the least work and the most trustworthy.

The reason is that the data comes directly from INPI, the institute that holds the French national company registry. The legal name, the legal form and the registration details are not typed from memory, lifted off a term sheet, or read from a scanned document. They come from the registry itself.

That matters because these fields do not stay here. They are injected into the documents Kapitable generates, so an error in a company's legal identity becomes an error on paper that someone signs.

What you'll learn

Why a registry lookup beats typing or uploading a document
How to create a company from its SIREN in two steps
The difference between a SIREN and a SIRET, and why the field rejects one of them
The single check worth making afterwards — which is not the one most people make

Before you start

A company comes before everything else in a project. Shareholders are assigned to companies, so the Shareholders page will not accept anyone until at least one company exists, and every process acts on a company. Creating your companies is the first substantive thing to do in a new project.

You will need the company's SIREN — nine characters — and a Category for it, such as BidCo or ManCo.

Steps

In the project navigation, open Companies. Select Create Company, then choose the From a SIREN route.
On Provide Registration Number, enter the SIREN and choose the Category.
Continue to Contact Person. Enter the main point of contact, or skip it — this can be completed later.
Select Create.
Open the new company's details and read the legal name. See below for why.

That is the whole flow: two steps, one of which is optional. The legal details are derived rather than asked for.

Choosing the category

The category organises companies within the platform and sets some default behaviour. On a build-up, BidCo and ManCo are the ones that matter.

It is not a decision to agonise over — it can be changed later from the company's details.

The one check worth making

The details retrieved from INPI are almost certainly correct as facts about that SIREN. What the lookup cannot tell you is whether that SIREN is the company you intended.

A single wrong digit in a nine-character number produces a different, real company — with a real name and real registration details, all internally consistent and all wrong. Nothing in the flow will flag it, because nothing is inconsistent.

So the check is not "are these details right?" It is "is this the company I meant?"

Open the company's details after creating it and read the legal name. It takes seconds, and it is the one error this route is prone to.

Common problems

The SIREN is rejected. It must be exactly nine characters. If what you have is fourteen digits, that is a SIRET — the establishment number, not the company. The SIREN is its first nine digits.

Kapitable could not reach the registry. It will tell you so and ask you to complete the details by hand. The company is still created; its legal identity simply has to be filled in from the registration documents instead.

The company is not French. INPI holds the French registry only. Use manual entry and set the registration country — the SIREN field becomes a Registration number and the RCS city becomes a registration city.

The company is newly formed and not yet registered. It will not be in the registry yet. Use manual entry, which is built for exactly this case.

The retrieved name is not the company you expected. You have the wrong SIREN. Correct the company's details, or delete it and create it again with the right number.

A3.1 — Three ways to create a company · choosing between SIREN, KBIS and manual entry
A3.3 — Creating a company from a KBIS · when you have the document rather than the number
A3.4 — Creating a company manually · non-French companies, and newcos not yet registered
A3.5 — Company details · reviewing and correcting a company's legal identity