Hawaii has no Secretary of State. Corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, trade names, trademarks, service marks and publicity name rights are all registered with the Business Registration Division of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, known as BREG, whose division page sits beside the department consumer offices in the King Kalakaua Building at 335 Merchant Street in Honolulu. The division is headed by the Commissioner of Securities, a title that appears on every release it issues.
Its records are searched through Hawaii Business Express, and the Search and Buy page of the rebuilt portal takes a business name with a begins with or contains setting, warns that the results should not be used as a definitive test of name availability, and sits beside three further tools: an authentication check for a certified document or Certificate of Good Standing, an agent search that lists every Hawaii business represented by a given registered agent, and an entity list builder. The division questions page says that what has been filed is public and viewable under the registered entity name, including officers, directors, partners, members, managers and registered agents to the extent the business has filed them, and that the paper record can be inspected in Room 201 of the same building. For Hawaii businesses by island and county, see the Hawaii county pages.
- Five dollars: a Certificate of Good Standing, which the division also calls a Certificate of Compliance, or ten dollars with expedited review.
- Three dollars, plus ten: a regular copy of a filed document at a flat rate, and ten dollars more to have it certified.
- End of the registration quarter: the annual report deadline, March 31, June 30, September 30 or December 31, by midnight Hawaii time.
- July 6, 2026: the day the new Hawaii Business Express portal went live, with the same fees, the same logins and no expedited processing for now.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Hawaii's own systems: the Business Registration Division page, the BREG frequently asked questions, the fee schedule under the Hawaii Business Corporation Act, the registration page, the online services page, the public alerts page, the release on deceptive certificate of standing solicitations, the release on unofficial annual business report solicitations, the third quarter 2026 annual business reports notice, the new business registration portal questions, the state archive preservation fee page, the Hawaii Business Express Search and Buy page, the Hawaii Business Express portal, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The portal that went dark on July 2 and came back on July 6
The portal questions page records the change of system in a handful of dates. The old Hawaii Business Express site went down at five in the afternoon Hawaii time on July 2, 2026, and the new site at hbe.dcca.hawaii.gov went live at one minute past midnight on July 6. The division says the filing fees did not change, existing usernames and passwords still work, payment methods are unchanged, and filings that were pending on the old system stayed pending and are processed in the order received.
Two things did change. Expedited processing is not available at this time, so the expedited column on the fee schedule cannot be bought for now, and forms that previously could only be filed on paper are coming online. Paper filings are still accepted by email, mail, fax and at the counter, and the date received is the effective date when the form is acceptable. The old address at hbe.ehawaii.gov now carries a notice sending visitors to the new portal.
Reading the record for standing, and buying the proof
The questions page tells a company to check its own status by entering its name on Hawaii Business Express, and a researcher does the same. The formal proof is a Good Standing Certificate, which the fee schedule lists as a Certificate of Compliance at five dollars, or ten dollars with expedited review, and which the division describes as certifying that a business is properly registered with the state and has complied with the statutory filing requirements.
It is ordered online by opening the entity record and going to the last tab, Buy Available Docs, or by telephone, email, fax, mail or in person with card details on the division credit card transaction form. The same tab sells copies: the fee schedule prices reproduction at twenty five cents a page and certification at ten dollars, while the questions page gives a flat three dollars for a regular copy and ten dollars more for a certified one, so a certified copy of a single document comes to thirteen dollars by the newer figure.
A certificate or certified copy carries an authentication that the Search and Buy page can verify. Service of process on the director of the department costs ten dollars.
Annual reports by quarter, and the ten dollar late fee
Hawaii spreads its reports across the year by the date of first registration. Since January 1, 2003 an entity registered between January 1 and March 31 files its annual report or statement by March 31 of each year, one registered in the second quarter by June 30, the third quarter by September 30 and the fourth by December 31, and nothing is owed in the year of registration itself. The report gives the public information on the entity and asks for no financial figures.
The division posts a reminder release at the start of each quarter, and its July 1, 2026 release gives the current online fees: twelve dollars fifty for LLCs, profit corporations and LLPs, two dollars fifty for nonprofit corporations and five dollars for partnerships, with reports due by midnight Hawaii time on the last day of the quarter to avoid a late filing penalty. A delinquent report can still be filed, and a ten dollar late fee is assessed for each year delinquent.
On paper the fee schedule shows the profit corporation annual report at fifteen dollars. A company can buy reminders through the MyBusiness Notifications page for two dollars fifty a year per business, and a report filed online earns a free email reminder the following year. An amended annual report to correct an approved one is free.
Who is on the file, and what never gets there
The questions page answers the ownership question with a condition: what can be seen depends on what the business has filed. Sole proprietorships do not register with the division at all, nor do unincorporated nonprofit associations, and foreign insurance companies register with the Insurance Division instead, so none of them appear in a business name search unless they have registered a trade name. An LLC is governed by an operating agreement that is not filed, and the division explains that its members are the owners and that a manager managed company elects managers who act for it.
A trade name, which the division also calls a DBA, is registered on Form T-1 by a sole proprietor or by a registered entity using a name different from its registered one, and the questions page spends several answers on a point it calls the single greatest source of confusion: registration does not grant ownership of a trade name, which is acquired by open and continuous use, and the department checks only that no substantially identical registration exists, not whether anyone is using the name.
A trade name registration has run for five years since July 1, 2003, can be renewed in the six months before it expires, and the department sends no reminder; an expired name may be registered by anyone. Each formation and other permanent filing also carries a one dollar state archive preservation fee under Section 94-8(c) of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, collected for the State Archives since 2013 and refundable if the filing is rejected.
The list builder and the other paid lookups
Beyond the free search, the online services page describes a Business Entity List Builder that assembles a custom list of registered businesses by criteria such as ZIP code, with every address, officer, trade name, trademark and service mark tied to each business, billed at five cents a record, so a list of a thousand partnerships in the 96817 ZIP code costs fifty dollars. The agent search on the Search and Buy page answers the reverse question, which companies a given registered agent represents.
MyBusiness Alerts sends a text or email on any change to a registered business record, which is the division own tool for catching a filing made in a company name without its knowledge. For the people behind a Hawaii company, the Hawaii people search guide covers the state locator sources.
What the formation fees say about a record
The fee schedule under Chapter 414, the Hawaii Business Corporation Act, is short and low. Articles of incorporation cost fifty dollars, an amendment, restatement, correction or dissolution twenty five, a merger one hundred, a name reservation ten dollars for one hundred twenty days, and a domestic application for reinstatement twenty five dollars, each with a twenty five dollar expedited review fee that cannot be bought while the new portal runs without expedited service.
A merger must take effect within thirty days of filing and its time is stated in Hawaiian Standard Time, and articles of dissolution may name a delayed effective date up to thirty days out, which is why a Hawaii record can show a dissolution dated after the filing that caused it. Registration forms are mailed to Post Office Box 40 in Honolulu or filed by email or fax with card details, and the division answers questions on 1-844-808-3222, option 2, from a quarter to eight in the morning until half past four Hawaii time on weekdays.
The mailings the division has named
The division states its own rule on its public alerts page: it does not solicit for any of its documents and neither uses nor endorses any third party to do so. Its October 20, 2023 release describes a Certificate of Status Instruction Form mailed by GA Business Compliance, an unregistered entity, with preprinted business details, a document number and a due date, and lists the tells: a nonfunctioning .org website, references to a Hawaii Secretary of State, an office that does not exist, a Hawaii Certificate of Status, a document the division does not issue, and a price far above the statutory five dollars.
Earlier releases, in March and June 2019 and June 2020, named Workplace Compliance Services and C.P.S., which mailed a 2019 Annual Report Instruction Form asking for one hundred twenty five dollars from a mail drop address, when the company was not registered to do business in Hawaii and every registered business can file its report directly online in the quarter it is due. The division asks anyone unsure about a notice to call 1-844-808-3222, option 2, before responding.
Questions about looking up a Hawaii business
Related Hawaii records
The other Hawaii guides on this site are the Hawaii public records law guide for the Uniform Information Practices Act, the Hawaii court records guide for eCourt Kokua, the Hawaii background check guide for the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, and the Hawaii county pages for Honolulu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai.