How to Register an EOOD in Bulgaria: A Step-by-Step Guide

Before the Commercial Register: name, address and business activity

Before you touch the Commercial Register (Bulgaria's public registry of all companies, run by the Registry Agency), settle three things: your company's name, its business activity, and its registered address. Each one can delay the whole registration by days if you have not checked it first.

• The name must be unique in the Commercial Register and must not mislead about ownership, activity, or origin. Check availability for free through the register's public search before you draft anything.
• If you want certainty that nobody takes your name while you prepare documents, you can reserve it in advance with form D1, for a separate fee (about 50 lev, roughly 25 euro, payable online too).
• The registered address must be a real address where the register and NAP (Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency) can send correspondence. It does not have to be where you actually work, many foreign founders use a lawyer's or accountant's office address.
• The main business activity code is declared at registration and is worth matching to what you actually do, it also feeds into later statistical obligations, such as the annual NSI report.

An EOOD (eднолично дружество с ограничена отговорност, a single-owner limited-liability company) is what most solo founders in Bulgaria choose: one owner, liability capped at the capital amount, a fairly simple management structure. If you have a co-founder, the form is an OOD, not an EOOD, and a couple of the documents look slightly different.

The founding documents: founding act, decision, signature specimen, declarations

Setting up an EOOD means preparing a set of documents, all needed at the same time when you file with the Commercial Register. Here is what each one is, and why it exists.

• Founding act (учредителен акт): the EOOD's core constitutional document, called a "дружествен договор" for an OOD with more than one owner. It states the company name, registered seat and address, business activity, capital amount, and management structure.
• Sole owner's decision: the document in which the owner formally decides to found the company, appoints the manager, and adopts the founding act.
• Manager's consent and signature specimen (спесимен): the manager agrees to take on the role and provides a notarized sample of their signature. This is the one document on this list you must handle in person at a notary, everything else can be prepared and signed remotely if you hold a КЕП (qualified electronic signature, the legal equivalent of a handwritten signature).
• Three declarations: under Art. 141(8) of the Commercial Act, confirming no legal bar to the manager holding the post, under Art. 142 of the Commercial Act, on non-compete activity, and under Art. 13(4) of the Commercial Register Act, confirming the accuracy of the filed facts.
• If someone other than the manager files the paperwork, a lawyer or accountant, you add a declaration under Art. 13(5) plus explicit power of attorney.
• Application form A4: the actual registration application, bundling all the documents above into one filing.

If you are founding the company from abroad, the notarized signature specimen is usually the one step that requires being physically present in Bulgaria, or using a Bulgarian consulate or a notary recognized under an international convention. Everything else can often be handled by a local lawyer or accountant acting under your power of attorney.

Share capital: the 1-euro minimum and the escrow account

An EOOD's capital is symbolic by law, the part worth getting right is the deposit procedure.

• The minimum capital for an EOOD is 1 euro (before Bulgaria adopted the euro in January 2026, the minimum was 2 lev), enough to satisfy the legal requirement, not to actually fund operations.
• The capital is deposited into an escrow account (набирателна сметка), a special bank account opened in the future company's name before it is registered. The bank issues a certificate of the deposited amount, which becomes part of the registration file.
• Once the company is registered, the escrow account converts into an ordinary current account, you do not need to open a new one.
• A higher capital, 100 or 1,000 euro say, carries no tax advantage, but can look more credible to banks and partners, especially if you plan to apply for business financing soon after founding.

In practice, most founders pick the minimum or slightly above it. Raising the capital later, if you need to, is a separate and simpler procedure than founding itself.

Filing online with the Commercial Register: KEP and the state fee

Once the documents are ready, filing with the Commercial Register can happen two ways: on paper at a Registry Agency counter, or entirely online. For most founders, especially those not living in Bulgaria, online is faster and cheaper.

• Online filing requires a qualified electronic signature (КЕП), either your own or a proxy's: a lawyer or accountant filing on your behalf under explicit power of attorney.
• The state fee for electronic filing is about 28 euro, exactly half the paper-filing fee of about 56 euro. The gap exists specifically to push filings online.
• All documents are prepared as PDFs and attached to the application through the Commercial Register's e-portal, and the fee is paid online by card.
• If you do not hold a Bulgarian КЕП yourself, common for foreign founders, an accountant or lawyer can file on your behalf, as long as they hold a valid power of attorney and their own electronic signature.

If you choose the paper route instead, you or your proxy file in person at the Registry Agency office covering your company's registered seat. The fee is higher and processing takes longer.

Timeline and what happens after you file

If the documents are correct on the first try, the registration officer reviews the filing and typically registers the company by the end of the next working day. In practice, most online filings get a result within 1-2 working days, up to 3 when the register is busier.

• If something is missing or inconsistent, say the amount on the bank certificate does not match the founding act, the register issues instructions to fix it rather than an outright refusal. You get a window to correct the filing without paying the fee again.
• Once registered, you receive an EIK (Единен идентификационен код): the unified identification code your company will use with every institution, bank, and partner from that point on.
• An EOOD is not automatically VAT-registered. VAT registration is a separate procedure, voluntary below a certain turnover threshold, mandatory above it.
• Open a company bank account right after registration, if you do not already have one beyond the escrow account, so you can invoice and receive payments in the company's name.

From here, the company is real, with everything that implies: bookkeeping from day one even with zero turnover, an annual tax return next spring, and a filing obligation even while activity is still at zero.

You're registered, what's next

Whether you handled the filing yourself or had a lawyer or accountant run it for you, the result is the same: a registered EOOD, ready to invoice. The next logical step is choosing how you will actually track invoices, expenses, and deadlines, before the first invoice ever goes out.

Worth reading next:

How FreeMe.bg helps with company formation and getting started
When you need an expert, and what that includes
What a company in Bulgaria actually costs

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