The documents that have to exist before your first hire
Your first employee is the director, and the file has to exist before the appointment
An appointment order refers to the company’s internal rules. Those rules are put into force by an order on principal activity. That order has to exist before there is a director to sign it, which means it is made on the founder’s decision rather than by the person being appointed.
Done in the wrong order, the documents either do not exist on the date they claim to, or they are signed by someone who was not yet in office. Both are visible to an inspector, and neither can be repaired later, because the dates are the evidence.
A legal entity
State registration, an ЄДРПОУ code, a bank account and a tax number. None of it makes you an employer.
An internal rulebook, correctly dated
Orders, policies and contracts that already existed on the day of the first appointment, in a sequence that still holds when someone reads the dates back.
Twelve documents, in the order they have to be signed
Order on principal activity
The founding order that puts the company’s internal rules into force. It has to exist before the director is appointed, because the appointment refers back to it.
Personnel orders
The order set covering appointment, transfer, leave and dismissal. Every later employment decision hangs off this format, and an inspection reads the sequence as much as the content.
Internal labour regulations
Working hours, discipline, and the mutual obligations of company and employee. Their absence is an administrative offence attributed to the responsible officer personally, not to the company.
Contracts and job descriptions
Employment contracts drafted for Ukrainian law rather than translated from a head office template, with a job or work instruction for every position on the staffing schedule.
Remuneration and bonus policy
How salary, allowances and bonuses are calculated and paid. Without it every discretionary payment is arguable, and the indexation obligation has nothing to attach to.
Four policies that protect the company
Personal data processing, a confidentiality undertaking, terms of use for company phones and computers, and the business travel and company car rules.
The fines are counted per person, and they move with the minimum wage
Ten minimum wages per person
UAH 86,470 at the 2026 minimum wage of UAH 8,647, for each person admitted to work without a written contract and without the notification filed before they start. A repeat within two years is thirty minimum wages, UAH 259,410.
One minimum wage each
UAH 8,647 for the staffing schedule, personnel files, personnel cards, timesheets or job descriptions when they are absent or wrong. They are counted separately rather than as a single failure.
A fine that follows the manager
Missing internal labour regulations or holiday schedule draws an administrative penalty of UAH 510 to 1,700 on the responsible officer rather than the company. Personal data failures reach UAH 17,000 for officials.
Questions about employer setup
When do we need to start?
Before registration completes, if the timing allows it. The order on principal activity and the first personnel orders have to carry dates that precede the director’s appointment, so the useful question is not how many days the drafting takes but which documents have to be signed before which event.
If the company is already registered and the director already appointed, we say so plainly and work out what can be regularised and what cannot. That is a more common starting point than people expect.
What is not in this package?
Two things, both deliberately. The documents that payroll produces month by month, meaning the staffing schedule, timesheets, personnel cards, holiday schedule and registration books, come with payroll and HR administration rather than with this package.
Military registration and reservation from mobilisation are a separate discipline with their own obligations and their own penalties, and they are handled as a separate service. Buying this package does not put your military registration in order, and we would rather say that here than let you discover it later.
Can we use our head office templates?
Not directly. Ukrainian internal documents have required content and a required relationship to each other, and a translated template usually fails on both. A job description that describes a role at the parent company is worse than none, because it is evidence that the position was never actually defined here.
Where the parent has obligations of its own, such as data protection or supply chain rules, those need to be built into the Ukrainian documents deliberately rather than assumed to carry across.
What does it cost?
We do not quote from a price list, for the same reason as the rest of our services: the work depends on how many positions you are creating, whether contractors are involved, and how much already exists. A five-person trading office and a twenty-person production site do not need the same file.
Tell us the shape of the company and we will scope it properly and give you a fixed figure before anything starts.
Find out what has to exist before your first appointment
Tell us your registration date and the positions you plan to fill. We will send back the document list in the order it has to be signed, and mark what has to be in place before the director is appointed.
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