As the number of freelance graphic designers grow, so does their need to understand the business side of running a freelance graphic design business. There are varying laws in every country and often states that govern how a freelance designers must set up their business and how they trade. Today, we've got some professional advice from the director of ecompanies.com.au, Daniel D'Alessandro. Daniel has put the time in to explain the ins and out of running a business or company in Australia and what you need to know. We hope the below information is valuable.

So you've got your domain registered, your logo designed and website live and you're ready to start trading. What name are you going to trade under and do you need to register a business name? There is a lot of confusion about what a registered business name is, and whether a given type of business needs a registered business name to trade as their desired name.

Many people will unnecessarily register a business name before registering a company, making the process more difficult and costly than it needs to be!

There are three standard types of business structures in Australia:

• Sole trader
• Partnership
• Company

When each of these business types is registered it has a legal name under which it can conduct business.

• A sole trader will automatically have the legal name of the person who registers the ABN, for example John Smith.
• A partnership's legal name will consist of all the names of the people involved.
• When registering a company you get to choose the legal name when making the application, e.g. 'Great Graphic Design Pty Ltd'

In all cases each business type is allowed to trade Australia wide as their legal name without having to register a business name.

So this brings us to what a registered business name is: A registered business name allows a business to trade as something other than its legal name. To continue our examples from above, registering a business name would allow the sole trader John Smith to trade as 'Lively Logo Design'. It would allow the company to trade as 'Gorgeous Graphics' or just 'Great Graphic Design', note that if a company wants to trade without its legal elements displayed, i.e without the 'Pty Ltd' on the end, it has to register the business name.

Business name registrations are handled by ASIC.gov.au and at time of writing cost $33 per year per name, there are no restrictions on the amount of registered business names a business can have.

Daniel is director and founder of eCompanies.com.au, the leading online Australian company registration service. Daniel has over 14 years of online business and software engineering experience, working in diverse fields such as insurance and hosting as well as being involved in a number of start ups.

Written by Clancy Clarke on Monday, January 12, 2015

Clancy is the Organic Search manager at DesignCrowd. Clancy has over 7 years of online marketing experience and a passion for analytics. Get in touch via Google+.