Onboarding guide

The article includes:

• Step 1: Signing up
• Step 2: Fill in personal details
• Step 3: Add company details
• Step 4: Add founders
• Step 5: Add your cap table
• FAQs

See also our full video walkthrough:

Important: Don't worry about getting everything perfect during onboarding

The information you enter during onboarding is not set in stone. Once you have completed onboarding, you will have full access to the platform and can edit your personal, company, founder and cap table information.

You cannot go back to an earlier onboarding step once you have moved forward, so if you realise that something needs changing, simply complete the onboarding process and amend the information afterwards.

Step 1: Signing up (Free Account)

1. Add name

• Enter your full legal name. This is required for the creation of legal documents.

2. Add email

• Provide your email address for your account.

3. Add password

• Create a secure password to protect your account.

4. Verify account

• After submitting your details, check your email for a verification link.
• Click the link to verify your account, then log in again to proceed.

Step 2: Fill in personal details

1. Add home address

• Enter your home address. This is required for legal purposes.

2. Add signature

• You can either draw your signature in the box or have the system generate a digital signature.
• Your signature will be used to digitally sign legal documents.

Step 3: Add company details

To add your company, enter your company registration number. FounderCatalyst will then use this to find your company and pull the relevant information from Companies House.

Note: Your company registration number is the only information entered during onboarding that cannot simply be changed later. Make sure you enter the correct company before continuing.

1. Company number

• Enter your company’s registration number.

2. Add company logo (Optional)

• You can upload a company logo, which will be used to brand documents.

3. Registered address

• Your registered office address will be pulled from Companies House.
• Review the address and confirm it is correct, or amend it if necessary.

4. Correspondence address

• You can choose to use your registered office address as your correspondence address, or enter different details.

5. General company details

These details are used when FounderCatalyst generates paperwork for your company. We need to understand more about your company to produce your free Initial Term Sheet and other paperwork.

You will be asked for information including:

• Holiday year starts in – the month your company's holiday year begins. If you don't know or haven't settled this yet, January is a standard default.
• Holiday year ends in – the month your company's holiday year ends. If you don't know or haven't settled this yet, December is a standard default.
• Normal working hours – your company's standard working hours. A suggested default is provided and is considered standard by many businesses.
• Next share certificate number – the next consecutive share certificate number to be used if further certificates need to be issued. For example, if you only issued one set of shares to yourself on incorporation, enter 2.
• Nominal value of a share – the nominal value specified when you incorporated your company. This is usually between £0.0001 and £1.00. If you don't know this value, you can usually find it in the oldest item ("Incorporation") in the Filing History tab for your company on the Companies House website.
• Salary Applicable Fraction – the rate at which salary accrues each day. 1/260 is adopted by most businesses.
• Corporation tax reference (optional) – your company's Corporation Tax UTR. While this is optional during onboarding, you will need the correct UTR for an Advance Assurance application.
• Payroll reference (optional) – your company's HMRC payroll reference, if you have one. This should be in the format of 3 digits, followed by a /, then 1–10 letters or numbers, for example 123/AB456.

7. Bank details

• Enter your company's bank details.
• If you do not yet have a company bank account, you can enter temporary dummy details to move forward, for example:
  • Account number: 12345678
  • Sort code: 12-34-56
• You will need a company bank account in place before you can complete a funding round, as this is required to receive investment funds.

8. Save options

• Once you’ve entered all the details, save your settings to move forward.

Step 4: Define founders

1. Founder list

• FounderCatalyst will pull a list of registered directors from Companies House.

2. Identify yourself

• Choose "This is Me" to identify yourself as one of the founders.

3. Invite other founders (if applicable)

• If there are additional founders, send them invites through the platform.

4. Add missing founders

• If any founders are missing from the list, you can manually add them. They will receive an invite to join the platform.

Step 5: Cap table

At this stage, you will be asked to add your initial cap table.

You don't need to enter your entire shareholding if you don't have all the information to hand. To move through onboarding, you can simply add yourself or one of your co-founders with just 1 share.

This is enough to complete the onboarding process.

1. Add the shareholder

• Select yourself or one of your co-founders as the shareholder.

2. Enter the number of shares

• If you are simply using this to complete onboarding, you can enter 1 share.

3. Allocate the shares

• Once you have entered the details, click "Allocate pending shares".

Clicking "Allocate pending shares" completes the cap table step and your onboarding process.

Once onboarding is complete, you will have full access to the platform and can return to the CapTable section to add or amend the rest of your shareholding information.

Tip for large cap tables: If you have a large number of shareholders, you don’t need to enter them all manually during onboarding. To move forward, simply add yourself as the only shareholder for now. Once you've completed onboarding, you’ll gain full access to the cap table section where you can bulk upload the rest of the shareholder data.

See our guide on bulk uploading your cap table

FAQs

I'm trying to add co-founders to the cap table, but can only select myself. I can't go back to "Invite your founders" to see the status there. How do I resolve this?

You can complete the onboarding, just entering your own shares for now.

Once you have finished entering the initial details, you can head to the People menu to add your co-founders and then to the CapTable to add their shares.

See our guide on Changing Details

I have dozens of shareholders - do I have to enter them all manually during onboarding?

No - to complete onboarding quickly, just add yourself for now. You can upload the full cap table later using our bulk upload tool, once you’ve finished onboarding.
Read the full guide here

I don't have a company bank account yet. How can I complete onboarding?

If you haven't opened your company bank account yet, you can enter temporary (dummy) bank details to complete the onboarding process (i.e. account number 12345678 and sort code 12-34-56).

Once your company bank account is ready, you can simply return to your company settings and update the bank details with the correct information. This won't affect your ability to complete onboarding in the meantime.