Registering a Company via freee, Moneyforward, and Similar Services — Overview

Freee and moneyforward help prepare the articles of incorporation and registration documents but do not register the company themselves — the applicant still files with the Ministry of Justice. There are known technical problems with freee and katakana names, and nuances around extra service fees. Free alternatives include TOSBEC and the government agency JETRO. Details follow below. Registering through freee (freee.co.jp/lp/launch/) helps produce the articles of incorporation and registration documents, and includes English-speaking support. Neither freee nor moneyforward register the company itself — they provide a template of the founding documents (定款), collect the data, prepare the teikan, and forward it to a notary for notarization; the applicant then files the documents with the Ministry of Justice (Homukyoku) themselves. An important nuance: freee charges separately for its accounting software and separately (an extra 20,000+ yen) for the option to file the annual tax return through them. Bookkeeping through freee (about 20,000 yen/year) combined with filing the blue form online yields a tax deduction of up to 650,000 yen. When registering through freee, it is worth carefully checking the documents — there have been cases where an applicant's name was left in Latin script instead of katakana (registration in the Latin alphabet is not possible). Freee has had a known issue with long foreign directors' names in katakana failing at the Ministry of Justice API (reported as of 2023, not confirmed whether it has since been fixed). Freee offers a document e-signature service (including for office leases): a unique link fills in an "inkan" (the entered name) plus a digital signature into the PDF — this has been noted as not very secure, since in theory anyone with the link could "sign." Some corporate lawyers fundamentally distrust digital signatures and insist on traditional notarization with physical seals. Tosbec (TOSBEC, Tokyo) is a free service, similar to a gyosei-shoshi, that helps prepare a standard teikan with a notary on-site, but it is not useful if custom clauses are needed in the articles. JETRO and TOSBEC are government organizations that do not offer turnkey support but can recommend lawyers and provide consultations; TOSBEC also runs free business-planning seminars. The articles of incorporation (定款) always require notarization by a notary (公証人, for KK) — a role separate from a 行政書士 (a licensed agent/lawyer who files documents on a client's behalf with the notary or the Ministry of Justice). It is possible to go to the notary directly and notarize the teikan without an intermediary. In one case, freee's system glitched while digitally signing a PDF without a paid software purchase; registering the company's electronic seal required scanning a form at 400 dpi, and only a Ministop convenience-store scanner had that resolution. After the Ministry of Justice's system also glitched, the participant downloaded all the documents prepared in freee and went to the Ministry of Justice in person — registration then went quickly. Source: https://www.freee.co.jp/lp/launch/ — freee service for generating articles of incorporation, preparing registration documents, and forwarding them to a notary. Source: https://www.jetro.go.jp — Official site of JETRO, the government business and trade support organization.