The Business Registration Division of the North Carolina Secretary of State records the information the statutes require to be kept as a public record and provides it to the public, and it says in the same breath what it will not do: the division acts in an administrative capacity only and cannot give legal advice. Its business registration page carries three separate free searches, one for business entities by organizational name or by an individual surname, forename and middle initial, one for assumed names, and one for new companies and changes.
A fourth tool is for checking rather than finding: a certificate validation search that takes a certificate number and confirms whether the office issued it. The division attaches one condition to all of them. Its online search tools are designed for interactive, real time use by individuals and businesses, automated or scripted searches may degrade system performance and are not permitted, and bulk access to the public data runs through its data subscription services instead. For North Carolina businesses by place, see the North Carolina county pages.
- Fifteen dollars or less: the real price of a Certificate of Existence, against the eighty two dollars a mailing scheme charged.
- Three free searches: business entities, assumed names, and new companies and changes, plus a certificate validation lookup.
- Five to ten business days: the turnaround for an entity creation, with authentications ten to fifteen, and online always faster.
- Ninety days after deployment: a deployed service member business can defer its annual report under the 2026 session law.
Written by SearchSystems.net from North Carolina's own systems: the North Carolina Secretary of State business registration page, the office alert on the certificate of existence scheme, the page on ordering certified documents, the business registration fee schedule, the new business checklist published by the office, the annual report due dates page, the Secretary of State fee list, the administrative dissolution and revocation questions, the entity status explanations, the assumed business names page, the assumed business name questions, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
What a Certificate of Existence actually is
The office defines the document rather than leaving it to inference. A Certificate of Existence is issued by the Secretary of State setting out particulars of the organization and status of a business entity, and it may be relied upon by any person as conclusive evidence that the domestic or foreign corporation is in existence or is authorized to transact business in North Carolina. That phrase, conclusive evidence, is why banks and counterparties ask for it.
It can be ordered in paper or electronic form, directly from the office, for fifteen dollars or less, with the online route priced at ten dollars plus a dollar a page. An account is needed to order an electronic certificate, which also lets the buyer track orders and search the entity by name.
The eighty two dollar mailing
The office publishes an alert about a company that mailed out forms so that businesses could order a North Carolina Secretary of State Certificate of Existence at a cost of eighty two dollars. The office calls it a business scheme and not necessary, and makes two further points. Businesses are not required to order a Certificate of Existence as a step in the formation process at all, so the mailing invents the obligation as well as inflating the price.
And the company is using public information on the records of the Secretary of State office to solicit North Carolina businesses, which is how a newly formed company finds such a letter in the post within weeks. The office publishes a copy of the mailing so it can be recognized, and notes that this type of mailing is making its way across the country.
The annual report vendors
A second alert covers the annual report season. Vendors, the office says, are aggressively pushing priority or early annual report filing, charging fees on top of the filing fees required by statute. Its advice is to save time and money by filing online after the first of the year, through the button on its own site. For a researcher the lesson is the same one the certificate scheme teaches: a letter that looks official and quotes a real statutory obligation may still be a private company charging a mark up, and the price published by the Secretary of State is the test.
The division also keeps a dedicated misleading mailings page and a form for reporting a tip or complaint.
The annual report calendar and the sixty day letter
North Carolina sets the annual report date by entity type on its due dates page. A business corporation files by the fifteenth day of the fourth month after its fiscal year ends, which for a calendar year company means April 15. A limited liability company files by April 15 of every year after the year it was created, whatever its fiscal year. Limited liability partnerships and limited liability limited partnerships use the fourth month rule, and a cooperative association with common stock files before March 1, with a copy to the Marketing Division of the Department of Agriculture.
On the fee page the report costs twenty five dollars for a business corporation and two hundred dollars for a limited liability company, with a three dollar charge for paying online by card or two dollars by bank transfer.
A missed report does not dissolve a company on the spot. The dissolution questions list the grounds for a Notice of Grounds for Administrative Dissolution: no annual report, fees more than sixty days past due, a change not reported within sixty days, sixty days without a registered agent or office, a stated end date that has passed, or interrogatories left unanswered. The company then has sixty consecutive days from the day the letter is sent to fix the problem.
Reinstatement costs one hundred dollars plus every unpaid annual report fee, takes effect on the date of the dissolution, and after five years a dissolved company loses the right to its name. The status list on the entity status page explains the labels a search returns: Active/Not Current means an entity that is active but delinquent on a required filing, and Active/Failure to Pay Fee means an annual report paid with insufficient funds after a notice of grounds, with the dissolution still running.
The deployment extension
North Carolina added a provision in 2026 for deployed service members. Where more than fifty percent of a business is owned by a deployed service member, an affidavit of deployment may be filed before the deployment begins, and the annual report then becomes due ninety days after the deployment ends. The affidavit is sent to the division by email. For anyone reading a record and finding an annual report apparently overdue, that is one explanation that does not mean neglect, and for a service member owner it removes a filing deadline from the list of things to manage from abroad.
Ordering copies and certified documents
Certified documents are ordered online, and the office requires a Secretary of State online account before an order can be placed or documents submitted. It publishes instructions for starting an order, placing an online order and viewing or checking previous orders, along with guidance on what it calls a dirty document, meaning an image that cannot be certified cleanly. Checks for paper filings are made payable to the North Carolina Secretary of State, and the division publishes a full fee schedule: articles of incorporation cost a hundred and twenty five dollars, reserving a corporate name thirty, articles of amendment fifty, articles of merger or share exchange fifty, articles of dissolution thirty, and a statement of resignation of a registered agent nothing at all.
Assumed business names at the register of deeds
A trading name in North Carolina is not a state filing. Since December 1, 2017, under Article 14A of Chapter 66 of the General Statutes, an assumed business name certificate is filed in the office of a county register of deeds, which records and indexes it, and the information is then uploaded to the statewide database the Secretary of State keeps and makes searchable. One certificate can name one county, several, or all one hundred, and the fee is the same however many counties are chosen.
The office gives its own example in its assumed name questions: John Smith, a sole proprietor running a lawn care business as Smith Lawn Maintenance, must file a certificate for that name.
Two limits shape a search. The Secretary of State database holds only filings made on or after December 1, 2017, and older filings had until December 1, 2022 to be refiled on the new forms before they expired, so a name first registered under the old law and never refiled has to be looked for at the register of deeds. And the state copy is not the official record: a certified copy of an assumed name filing comes from the register of deeds where it was filed, and the effective date is the date filed there, not the date it reached the state database.
The business entity search itself lists company officials and registered agents among its search routes, so an officer name entered there finds the entities that person is tied to on their annual reports.
Questions about looking up a North Carolina business
Related North Carolina records
North Carolina's other records guides on this site are the North Carolina public records law guide for the public records statutes, the North Carolina court records guide for the clerks of superior court, the North Carolina property records guide for the registers of deeds, and the North Carolina county pages for every county office.