No domiciliation contract, no registration: the first visit to the agency is a file to complete, not a courtesy call
Article R123-167 of the French Commercial Code is short: any business setting up its registered office in shared premises "presents, in support of its registration application, the domiciliation contract". In other words, the founder who walks into an agency does not have a Kbis yet, and will not get one until the agency produces that contract. For the front desk, the first visit is not a courtesy call: it is a file to complete, with documents missing every other time.
The text has been in force since 1 January 2009 (decree no. 2008-1488). It says two things. First, that the domiciliation contract is part of the registration file, just like the articles of association: the commercial court registry does not take it on trust. Second, in its second paragraph, that the rule also applies to a company headquartered abroad that opens an agency, a branch or a representative office in France. In a multi-agency network, that second case is not marginal: a share of the founders who show up at the counter come from elsewhere, do not know the registry's vocabulary and do not know which documents to bring. The agency knows exactly what is needed — the director's ID, proof of their personal address, where the accounts are kept, reachable contact details, everything article R123-168 requires to be kept on file — but that list lives on a laminated sheet behind the counter, and the visitor discovers it on arrival.
This is where the QR welcome of AppH's Pack Accueil changes the nature of the first appointment. The founder who scans the agency screen, in French or in their own language, receives the list of expected documents, ticks the ones they have with them, and the assistant prepares for the agency staff a file showing what is present and what is missing. If a document is missing, the visitor leaves with a written reminder and a date to come back, not a vague recollection. When the file is complete, the assistant drafts the domiciliation contract from the agency's price grid — duration, address, services — and puts it in front of an authorised person who checks the documents, signs, and hands over the copy the registry expects. The assistant verifies no identity and judges no supporting document; it keeps the list, counts what is missing, and writes the draft.
For AppH
- The document list is the same in every agency of the network and is updated in one place: a change of decree or a new demand from the local registry no longer has to be reprinted on thirty laminated sheets.
- The file started at the front desk follows the founder onto their phone and then into their client area: the reminder of missing documents, the return date and the contract draft sit in one conversation, visible to whichever agency they come back to, even if it is not the same one.
Against / the honest limit
- AppH does not verify the director's identity, does not check the authenticity of a supporting document and does not assess whether the file meets the domiciliation provider's obligations: those acts remain the job of an authorised person at the agency, with their signature and date.
- The contract draft is only worth something if the agency's grid has been proofread by the network manager. A mistake in the template repeats in every draft, which is precisely why nothing goes out without a human review.
We are sometimes asked why we insist on the physical front desk when "everything is done online". Article R123-167 is the answer: the domiciliation contract is an act that gets signed, between an agency and a person, and the registry wants it in the file. The time lost in a domiciliation agency is not lost on the website, it is lost at the counter, when the visitor comes back three times because a document was missing that nobody had written down for them. We do not automate the contract; we make sure it is ready to sign at the right moment.
Reviewed by a human at AppH