The New Online Tool In N.B. Designed To Help Entrepreneurs
FREDERICTON – The challenges businesses have faced from the Covid-19 pandemic have done little to slow the number of New Brunswickers choosing to start their own business.
According to Service New Brunswick, an average of 5,000 new businesses register in New Brunswick each year. The Corporate Registry of New Brunswick shows that, as of October 31, there had been a 14 percent increase in registry transactions in 2021 over the previous year.
To provide a better resource for entrepreneurs, the province, along with Service New Brunswick, (SNB) Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), and Opportunities NB (ONB) launched a new online resource last month.
The Business Structures Wizard is an effort to help define the critical opening steps to registering a new business. The tool first launched in B.C. earlier this year.
Tonya Price, the director of the corporate registry at Service New Brunswick, says it was her office’s B.C. counterpart who first mentioned the success it had in launching the Wizard.
“We looked at it here in New Brunswick and just loved it and thought it was really simple and really helpful to entrepreneurs wanting to start a business,” Price told Huddle.
She says the Business Structures Wizard launched for use online in New Brunswick November 29.
Built on BizPaL, a service already provided by the federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, the Wizard was developed collaboratively in B.C. with help from federal partners at ISED.
Price says B.C. and New Brunswick are the only two provinces that offer The Business Structures Wizard.
Answers in eight easy questions
“We know in the corporate registry that sometimes businesses think that they should be a partnership, but really it’s a sole proprietorship or incorporation, so they do make errors,” says Price.
She adds that financial services providers often spend a fair amount of time educating entrepreneurs on what type of business would be most appropriate for them.
Price feels the online tool will reduce the time banks spend explaining the theory behind each entity, while reducing errors by putting the information at the fingertips of entrepreneurs from the start.
The Business Structures Wizard is offered as a free, self-serve tool to help New Brunswick entrepreneurs choose their appropriate business structure; an outcome factored by answers to a series of eight questions.
For some, deciding on the type of business to launch as either a sole proprietorship, general partnership, or an NB Corporation can be challenging, and the Business Structures Wizard helps in adjusting for the right fit.
Those looking to define their business operation can answer questions like: Where will your business operate? or how much risk is there in your industry or profession?
There are also questions related to how many people involved with the business are considered owners and the number of employees.
It also provides simplified access to information and government services and for SNB, which means fewer errors, less uncertainty, and an overall reduction of the red tape burden on businesses.
Price says depending on how the user defines certain aspects of their business, the recommendations will change as the answers change. She says users can ask for the Wizard to provide a description of all the business types recognized in the province at any time.
Tailor-made for New Brunswick
Business entity types that exist can vary by province, which Price notes was also factored into the Wizard’s implementation in New Brunswick, saying corporate law in her jurisdiction and other provinces have differences.
“For example, in British Columbia, they have benefit corporations, which is not an entity type that we have right now, and so we needed to really look at in great detail that description of all of the different business types and make sure that it matched with our legislation–and so we did customize it to remove benefit corporations,” said Price.
Also specific for New Brunswick is that the tool has been translated and made accessible in both English and French.
While The Wizard provides another layer of support for entrepreneurs, SNB continues to help entrepreneurs officially register names and incorporate their businesses, while ONB’s Business Navigation Team also offers additional support with licensing, regulations, inspection requirements, and permits.