What’s actually in a business formation record, field by field

“Business formation data” is a vague enough phrase that two vendors can use it to describe products with almost nothing in common. One means a company name and a filing date. Another means a full record with officers and reachable contacts. The gap between them is most of the value.

Here’s what a formation record actually contains, field by field, and how much you can trust each one.

Fields that come straight from the filing

Entity name. Exactly as filed, including the suffix. Reliable everywhere, though worth normalizing — registries are inconsistent about punctuation and casing.

Filing number. Every state issues one, and every state calls it something different: document number in Florida, SOSID in North Carolina, UBI in Washington, department ID in Maryland. It’s your join key back to the source.

Entity type. Domestic LLC, foreign LLC, corporation, LP, LLP. The domestic/foreign split matters more than people expect — a foreign registration is an established company expanding, not a startup, and it’s a completely different sales conversation.

Filing date and status. Both reliable. Status is worth watching over time rather than once, since administrative dissolution is common in states that enforce annual reports.

A registered agent receives legal documents for the company. Hiring a commercial agent does not establish that the company is a shell, lacks an operating address, or has no useful contacts. Check the principal or mailing address and named officials separately; an agent address alone does not locate the operating business.

Fields that depend entirely on the state

Officers, members and managers. This is the field that varies most. Arizona and Alaska publish them at formation; Alaska even gives ownership percentages. Delaware publishes nothing. California requires a Statement of Information within 90 days; it may be filed earlier. The full breakdown is in which states publish LLC member names.

A registered agent receives legal documents for the company. Hiring a commercial agent does not establish that the company is a shell, lacks an operating address, or has no useful contacts. Check the principal or mailing address and named officials separately; an agent address alone does not locate the operating business.

County or parish. Availability and meaning vary by source. Alabama formation filings go directly to the state under the process effective January 1, 2021. A registered-office county or parish is not necessarily the operating location; check the field definition and principal address.

Nature of business. Rare and valuable. New Hampshire asks what the company intends to do; Vermont collects a classification at registration. Most states leave you to infer industry later.

Fields that are appended, not filed

Email and phone. With rare exceptions, registries don’t collect these. Any vendor showing you contact details on a formation record has matched them from elsewhere, and the honest thing to do is say so and publish a match rate rather than imply the state provided them.

This is the field to interrogate hardest when you’re comparing vendors. Ask what percentage of records carry a contact, ask whether blanks are left blank, and be suspicious of anything approaching full coverage — it usually means guessed data rather than matched data.

The practical test

Take one record and try to reach the company with it. If you end up at a filing service, the record was thin regardless of how many columns it had. If you reach someone who signed the articles, it was a real record.

Our full schema is on the data page, and this piece on sourcing filings covers where to get the raw material yourself if you’d rather build it.