The Business Entity Division of the Alabama Secretary of State operates as a depository for the records of domestic entities and of foreign entities that have qualified to transact business in Alabama. Its business entity records page opens the Government Records Inquiry System, the office search, with four routes in: entity name, entity number, officer, agent or incorporator, and reservation or registration number. Each route opens in its own browser window.
The office describes itself with numbers that tell a researcher what to expect. The division was born in 1850, when legislation first let the Secretary of State file and certify articles of incorporation for road construction companies, and it now has twelve employees handling some 500 requests each day about its 250,000 filings. The counter at 770 Washington Avenue, Suite 580 in Montgomery answers from eight in the morning until five, Central time, on 334-242-5324. For Alabama businesses by place, see the Alabama county pages.
- Search by a person: the inquiry system takes an officer, agent or incorporator name, not only an entity name or number.
- Twenty five dollars: a certificate of existence, with copies at two dollars a page and certification at ten dollars.
- Seven status words: Exists, Canceled, Consolidated, Dissolved, Merged, Revoked and Withdrawn, each a filter on the name search.
- No annual report here: corporations authorized to transact business in Alabama no longer file one with the Secretary of State.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Alabama's own systems: the Alabama Secretary of State business entity records page, the business entity search by entity name, the Business Entities division page, the Secretary of State fee schedule, the domestic business entities brochure, the domestic corporations page, the limited liability companies page, the foreign corporations page, the reporting business entity fraud page, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The filters on the name search
The search by entity name states the currency of what it holds, filings completed through the previous day, and then lets the name be narrowed four ways. The type list runs from a Delaware statutory trust through domestic and foreign corporations, benefit corporations, corporations sole, employee cooperative corporations, general partnerships, homeowners associations, limited liability companies and their series, non profit, professional and public forms, real estate investment trusts and unincorporated associations.
The place of formation can be any of the sixty seven Alabama counties, another state, a Canadian province or a foreign country. A principal city can be typed in. And the status list holds seven words, Exists, Canceled, Consolidated, Dissolved, Merged, Revoked and Withdrawn, with three more entries for a registered name, a name reservation and a previous name, so that a company found under an old name still turns up.
A quiet change affects anyone who kept an old entity number. The office switched from a six digit to a nine digit entity ID format, and an existing number simply gained three leading zeros. The brochure for new filers adds the point that trips up the most searches: the entity ID issued when a formation is processed is not an EIN, and a federal employer number should never appear on a state filing. For corporation records between 1949 and 2010 the office sends searchers to the state archives.
What the status words mean for a running company
The office uses Exists for an entity that has been formed or qualified and has not been ended, and its own guidance says a status of Exists is what to watch for after a formation is processed. The same word carries a cost. Any entity that shows a status of Exists on the website is subject to being taxed, and a dissolution cannot be backdated to the day the business stopped trading; it takes effect on the date the office receives it, after which the status changes to Dissolved.
For a researcher that means an Alabama company still showing Exists may be dormant but is still on the tax rolls, while a Revoked or Withdrawn entry needs the filing history to explain why.
Certificates and copies
The fee schedule prices the proof documents under Section 10A-1-4.31 of the Code of Alabama. A certificate of existence costs twenty five dollars. Copies of documents cost two dollars a page and certification of a document ten dollars. A name reservation, whether new, duplicate, corrected, renewed or transferred, costs twenty five dollars on paper and twenty eight dollars online. Checks go to the Alabama Secretary of State at Post Office Box 5616, Montgomery, with a thirty dollar charge for one that bounces.
Copies of online filings are not mailed out and must be printed within fifteen days of filing, and a paper filer who wants a copy back sends a second copy and a stamped, self addressed envelope.
The two hundred dollar formation and the name that must come first
Alabama is unusual in requiring a certificate of name reservation before any formation document can be filed, under Section 10A-1-4.02(f) for a domestic entity and Section 10A-1-5.11 for a foreign one. A domestic for profit corporation, nonprofit corporation or limited liability company then files its certificate of formation with the Secretary of State for two hundred dollars, the original and one copy. A foreign corporation or foreign limited liability company registers for one hundred fifty dollars with the application in duplicate, and the office asks that the check be dated within the last ninety days.
An amendment, a change of registered agent or office, a conversion, a merger or a dissolution each cost one hundred dollars on the schedule, and a registered agent who resigns pays nothing.
The annual report Alabama does not take
The Business Entities page opens with a sentence that explains why an Alabama record carries no report history: corporations authorized to transact business in Alabama are no longer required by law to file an annual report with the Secretary of State. The fee schedule still carries a line for a domestic for profit annual report at ten dollars under Section 10A-2-16.22, marked as collected by the Department of Revenue for the Secretary of State.
Read together, the two pages mean that whatever yearly obligation an Alabama corporation has runs through the tax authority, not through the business register, and a search here will not show a report filed or missed.
Fraud complaints the office cannot take
The office posts a warning on its records pages that it has received complaints about potentially fraudulent business filings, and then draws the limit of its powers. The Secretary of State is not authorized under the law to investigate business fraud or to give legal advice, and it cannot remove an existing filing on grounds of fraud without an order from a court of proper jurisdiction. Its fraud reporting page instead routes each kind of complaint to the agency that handles it, from securities and insurance to contractors, charities, identity theft and consumer complaints, and points anyone unsure to local law enforcement, the district attorney, the Alabama Attorney General or the licensing agency concerned.
The attorneys in the office hold a license to act for the State of Alabama only and are barred from advising the public. A reader who finds a suspicious Alabama filing should pair the search with the Alabama court records guide, since only a court can undo it.
What the register will not answer
The division holds for profit and nonprofit corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships, registered limited liability partnerships and limited liability limited partnerships. A sole trader with no entity has no entry, and the only state record for an assumed name is in the trademark records the Secretary of State keeps separately. An employer identification number comes from the Internal Revenue Service and is deliberately kept off the state file.
Whether a company holds a license, owes tax or employs anyone is not in the register at all; the Alabama public records law guide explains how to ask the agencies that would know.
Questions about looking up a Alabama business
Related Alabama records
Alabama's other records guides on this site are the Alabama public records law guide for the Public Records Law, the Alabama court records guide for the circuit and district clerks, the Alabama background check guide for the state criminal history, and the Alabama county pages for every county office.