Registered scope of business

What it means

The registered scope of business lists the activities entered in the commercial register that a company may carry out. Most rest on a trade licence, some on special authorisations.

Free trades are notified and obtained quickly; craft and regulated trades require qualifications or a responsible representative. Regulated activities have their own statute and supervisor.

The registered scope is not the same as the SK NACE code the statistics office assigns to a company. The code serves statistics and, for some grants, eligibility checks, but only the registered scope gives the right to carry out an activity. The two often drift apart, because the code does not change by itself when the business expands.

How it works in practice

When the business expands, the scope is extended through the trade register and then entered in the commercial register. The fee is small; preparing documents takes longer.

Customers check the registered scope before signing. In public procurement and larger tenders a mismatch between scope and bid is grounds for exclusion.

For a sole trader the scope lives only in the trade register, and an extract from it is the proof a bank or customer asks for. When a sole trader moves to an s. r. o., licences do not carry over: the company has to notify them afresh, with a responsible representative for regulated trades, and the transition timetable has to allow for that.

What to watch out for

Invoicing for activity outside the registered scope is a double risk: an administrative sanction, and a challenge to the customer’s deduction of that cost.

Calls for EU funds and other support usually require the company to hold the licence for the supported activity on the day it applies. Adding the activity after filing does not rescue the application, and the company loses support over a formal defect it could have fixed in a few days.