ABR Help

Legal Name

What to enter

This name is the entity’s name that appears on all official documents or legal papers. This name may be different from the entity’s trading name (that is, the name the entity trades under).

Depending on your entity, your name can be one of the following:

sole trader – your own name
Australian private company – the name registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission
Australian public company – the name registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission
cooperative– the name registered in your memorandum of understanding
strata title – the name registered with a State authority
other incorporated entity – the name registered with or incorporated under the relevant State Act
partnership – the legal names of all the partners
superannuation fund – the name registered with the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority
trust – the name of the trust as shown in the trust deed
other unincorporated entity – the name by which your entity is usually known, as stated on any formal documentation (such as bylaws, charter, lodge orders, rules).

How to enter

The entity must comply with the following criteria to ensure the information provided for this field is correct. The <name> field:

is mandatory and therefore must be completed
should not contain only numerics
should not contain invalid characters for ‘Family’ and ‘Given names’. Invalid characters are ~`!@#$%^&*()_+{}\|;:?/><= [].”
should not contain invalid characters for organisations. Invalid characters are ~^<>+,*. Valid characters are A-Z a-z 0-9`!@#$%&()_-={}[]\|;.:”’?/space.
should not contain only numeric characters for organisation name
should not contain three or more repeated alpha characters in a row
should not contain two or more hyphens (-), apostrophes (’), spaces ( ) or punctuation marks in a row
should not contain the text ‘As above’
is restricted to 40 characters for <Family name>
is restricted to 40 characters for <Given name>
can contain ‘Proprietary Limited’, ‘Pty Ltd’ or ‘Proprietary Ltd’ only if the entity type is an Australian private company, limited partnership, superannuation fund or other incorporated entity
is completed in ‘Other given name’ only when there is a given name present
is restricted to 200 characters for organisations
can be changed or updated by the entity through the internet, however, updates are not automatically processed by the system. They are checked and processed by the Registrar.
should not include any of the following terms – ‘receivership’, ‘bankrupt’, ‘liquidation’, ‘not applicable’, ‘P/I/P’, ‘as trustee for’, ‘T/A’, ‘N/A’.

To update the name, the entity selects the <name> field and re-enters details as appropriate.