Starting a Limited business with multiple websites?

[JGWS]

Hello everyone new to the forums and looking for some advise to be honest. I've tried to be as detailed as possible in the structure of what I'm looking to achieve whilst also looking for some answers. I've searched the web for a few days now and watched some videos but don't feel the answers are very clear on what I'm looking to do.

Company Introduction
I'm planning to (not yet done) create a company which offers a verity of online services based around website development. This is fine given this is going to be the primary goal of the company itself. Everything here would be handled inhouse as it were and all operate from one system which I have developed already (internal use).

Fake Information To Help Explain
So as mentioned above I have my primary business in mind where everything would flow through essentially. This company would host (own) all sub-projects (income and expenses) as it'd all be registered under this primary business. During this sort of structure we'll call the primary business Alpha.

So Alpha itself is the core of the business, everything flows through here and this is the registered company within the U.K which focuses on providing website development services.

*Note: The following companies do not exist, the information below is created to set the picture.

Now lets say I own another website called Bravo and Bravo is an already established website which is focused on a gaming community and servers within games. People who play on the servers run by this website can if they choose to can purchase a package (subscription) for 30 days giving them more in game perks on the selected servers. This website would have both an income and expense reporting.

We now come to our third website, we'll call this one Charlie which is a website related to offering website services to a very tight compact community. This service itself would run primarily based on subscriptions for support but also custom work which is billed hourly or as per the project. This website would have both an income and expense reporting.

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Quick Recap of the different websites;
Alpha: Registered Company in the U.K. Providing website development services.
Bravo: Provides in game services on a subscription based system.
Charlie: Provides website development services to a limited community of people using the service.

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I do hope the information above makes this somewhat clear on the idea or well the proposed solution I'd be looking to build this business on.

Essentially Alpha would be the registered company but I'd have different websites under this (Bravo and Charlie, maybe more) which aren't registered businesses. These websites would have their full reporting done through Alpha, so all income and expenses as well as any additional reporting.

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Questions I have
So I have some questions regarding this and the way I should go around this if I choose to go forward with creating the business since it seems like it already has branches of its own.

Q1: Registering my Limited company, would be I better to to have something like NAME Group Limited to indicate there is a group of websites or services linked?
Q2: Would I really need to register each one of these as an individual business or would the others essentially be sub-companies/branches of the main business?
Q3: If I can do it all under one business, in the footer would I simply represent it as something along the lines of; Website Name - Part of NAME Group Limited?

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Any other advise, useful links etc would be much appreciated. I know this is a lot of information and I thank you for taking the time to read through and offer any insight you may have.

 

[Scalloway]

I would register one business initially and use that for all the businesses initially. You could still register companies withthe other names and keep them dormant until the business grew enough to hive off that part.

Initially the other websites would have a footer like this: "Bravo is a trading name of Alpha Ltd".

 

[JGWS]

I would register one business initially and use that for all the businesses initially. You could still register companies withthe other names and keep them dormant until the business grew enough to hive off that part.

Initially the other websites would have a footer like this: "Bravo is a trading name of Alpha Ltd".

Thank for you for responding, so I should go with my initial plan of action in this case.

Generally speaking I should be alright for the financial aspect as I'm going to keep all the records in a nice manageable order with each websites income and expenses along with all the payments etc logged on one system, Meaning that when it comes to profits etc everything will be aligned based on what's actually been profit and loss.

It's also really nice to know I could register multiple business's as dormant and leave them branching off the main and if the time came I could easily turn them independent and have already done the ground work for this.

I appreciate the response and advise, if you have anything else you'd recommend I'm all ears.

 

[WaveJumper]

I am not sure why you are not running this by your accountant / tax advisor its going to save you a lot of headaches in the future

 

[Scalloway]

nything else you'd recommend

A robust accounting sytem will enable you to keep track of income and expenditure for each business. As Wave Jumper has said you should be getting an accountant on board to advise you. Setting things up properly at the beginning will save cost and heartache down the line later.

 

[JGWS]

I am not sure why you are not running this by your accountant / tax advisor its going to save you a lot of headaches in the future

This is still a very early days idea I'm working with at the moment, so really looking for some general advise from people who may have done something like this before on what to be expecting etc and the possibility of it. Getting an accountant in place is something I'm looking to do over the coming days. Generally just wanting to know if I'd be going around this the right way before speaking with one or creating separate entities from the ground up.

A robust accounting sytem will enable you to keep track of income and expenditure for each business. As Wave Jumper has said you should be getting an accountant on board to advise you. Setting things up properly at the beginning will save cost and heartache down the line later.

I agree with you here Wave Jumper is right about the accountant and it's on the books to be done over the next couple of days, well to be looking for the right one. I was more curious since I'd like to have a solid plan in mind or on paper before going to an accountant and moving forward. Want to make sure I've reviewed all the options initially before hitting the start button on things.

 

[Mark T Jones]

To mirror much of the above: Start by keeping everything as simple as possible.

I probably wouldn't even go for the dormant companies - business names are seldom as important/valuable as their owners think they are.

And above all, focus on getting one business running properly before you get distracted by another.

 

[WaveJumper]

And remember the more complicated you make the structure the more expense your going to incur the accountants will be rubbing their hands together in glee. As advised above start simple and my advice would also be select a good accounting package that going to meet your needs now and in the future as and when things take off.

 

[JGWS]

To mirror much of the above: Start by keeping everything as simple as possible.

I probably wouldn't even go for the dormant companies - business names are seldom as important/valuable as their owners think they are.

And above all, focus on getting one business running properly before you get distracted by another.

And remember the more complicated you make the structure the more expense your going to incur the accountants will be rubbing their hands together in glee. As advised above start simple and my advice would also be select a good accounting package that going to meet your needs now and in the future as and when things take off.

Thank you both for the insight. I do already have other web projects that are currently up and running, I don't make any income from these at the moment. I may keep them like that for the time being and focus on getting the primary company up and running. The good news is my other projects require little work on my part, just updates now and again, fortunately I do all of these myself so it incurs no costs. I'll probably leave those as hobbies and isolated until such times it seems right to expand and bring those into the fold where income and profits would have an effect.

 

[fisicx]

Keep it simple. One company and multiple websites.

I have loads of websites each setup for a specific purpose. All hosting and other costs go through the company as does all income. Don’t make it complicated for yourself.

 

[JGWS]

Keep it simple. One company and multiple websites.

I have loads of websites each setup for a specific purpose. All hosting and other costs go through the company as does all income. Don’t make it complicated for yourself.

So you've been doing what I was thinking of doing. Glad to hear it's actually pretty straight forward. Curious now if you would be able to answer this. My original idea is that the business itself would serve only for record keeping of the other projects. I.E. The company wouldn't directly be offering services, taking payments etc. It would just be the core of the business dealing with all the company information, including income, expenses etc. The branches (projects) would just essentially report all the costing factors etc to the company. Would that be fine to operate the business like this?

Essentially having the registered business operating records of all other branches (projects/websites) under one host. Just for each of the projects reporting it all to the main company for reporting purposes and keeping everything in order.

Beginning to feel like I am now over complicating this, just want to be clear when setting my roadmap etc.

 

[fisicx]

That’s exactly how I do it. The company only exists to process the cash. my accountant does the books and saves me a ton of tax. The only place you see the company details is in the footer of some websites. Others don’t make any mention as they are support sites and don’t have any direct income.

 

[JGWS]

That’s exactly how I do it. The company only exists to process the cash. my accountant does the books and saves me a ton of tax. The only place you see the company details is in the footer of some websites. Others don’t make any mention as they are support sites and don’t have any direct income.

Fantastic I'm really glad to hear this since I've already spent a lot of time developing processes for this and systems. I was beginning to think I had wasted a lot of time but sounds like I've gotten myself setup just right. I really do appreciate your insight into this.