In brief:
- In the U.S. Articles of Incorporation (AOI) are documents filed with the Secretary of State (SOS) that legally constitute a corporation’s formation.
- Finding a company’s Articles of Incorporation requires manually searching the SOS databases (there’s one for each state) to find them
- A more efficient way to find Articles of Incorporation are automated solutions like Middesk that can query all SOS databases at once
All companies in the U.S. are required to file Articles of Incorporation with a state government before they can legally operate in that state. They contain essential information about the company including the legal business name, operating addresses, who is associated with the business, among other things.
The type of business identity information found in Articles of Incorporation are critical for Know Your Business (KYB) checks, and accessing the information from these documents is one of the easiest ways to identify illegitimate businesses at the top of the onboarding funnel.
To help you do that, this article discusses the most common methods for how to find Articles of Incorporation for another company, if you’re a business evaluating the legality and risk of a B2B relationship. We’ll cover:
- What are Articles of Incorporation?
- How to find a company’s Articles of Incorporation
- Get more than just Articles of Incorporation from SoS portals with Middesk
Let’s first talk a bit more about what Articles of Incorporation are, and what functions they fulfill.
Articles of Incorporation are a set of legal documents filed with the Secretary of State office for each state a business is operating in. They contain information about the business, including their business name, operating addresses, business EIN / TIN, officers, directors, and who is associated with the business, and other important business information.
Articles of Incorporation are required of any business when it’s established, and records of these are kept in the Secretary of State offices for each state.
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The purpose of Articles of Incorporation
A corporation must have Articles of Incorporation filed with the SOS in the United States to be legally recognized and allowed to operate there. In the U.S., this includes filings in each state the business operates in. These records allow the state and federal governments to maintain oversight over business operations, and keep identifying information for a company.
For other businesses, Articles of Incorporation are particularly useful for business verification processes, because they contain an official record of key information you can verify against information a business provides you when they are trying to onboard with you.
When a business completes your onboarding application, they will provide information like their name, address, and EIN, which you can then compare against the information in the SOS databases, verifying the business is who they say they are.
Are there different types of Articles of Incorporation?
Articles of incorporation come in two different forms:
- Certified: These are official, exact physical copies issued by the government agency that they were filed with. They are usually printed on security paper and come with a cover page that bears the insignia of the issuing government agency.
- Uncertified: These are physical or digital replicas of the documents that do not come directly from a government agency that registers corporations.
Generally, uncertified copies of Articles of Incorporation are sufficient if a business wants to verify a corporation’s information, authenticity, and potential risk factors for the sake of KYB. That’s because uncertified Articles of Incorporation are still coming from the authority that issued this information, and this information can be treated as a source of truth.
Certified copies are usually only needed for legal applications, not because the information can’t be relied on.
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Finding Articles of Incorporation for another company is an important step when a business is looking to onboard or maintain that other company as a client or partner. It’s a way to check the corporation’s essential information, and generally to make sure the corporation is legally registered and permitted to operate where it does.
So how can you look up Articles of Incorporation for another company? There are really only two methods:
1. Use a dedicated business verification software like Middesk
Top-notch business verification solutions can search and draw data from all every Secretary of State portals in the U.S. at once, providing results in minutes. This makes it easier to find a company’s Articles of Incorporation, even if you don’t know where the company is actually incorporated.
Rather than searching each Secretary of State office portal individually, Middesk customers can search a business once and get information from all relevant Secretary of State offices. Searching each SOS database manually doesn’t work for most businesses at scale, while using a tool that can search all the databases at once saves significant time and effort when verifying businesses.
Some tools will only search the SOS databases, but Middesk can provide other important business verification information that can help you check if a company is legitimate and assess its risk profile. This includes tax identification, beneficial ownership, PEP and watchlist status, adverse media coverage, if they have any ongoing litigations or liens filed against them, bankruptcy information, and more.
We understand that your decision-making relies on accurate, current data from a KYB vendor you can depend on. That’s why we source our data directly from authoritative sources like Secretary of State offices and other government bodies.
2. Manually search the Secretary of State Offices for each state individually
Each state has its own Secretary of State office, and database containing Articles of Incorporation for businesses. There is no universal database for all 50 states, nor centralized and free place to run manual searches.
To find a business’ Articles of Incorporation, you will need to access the individual website and database for each state’s SOS office, enter the information you have about the business like their name, address, and EIN/TIN, and then review the information returned to determine if it’s the same business.
In the California SOS database for example, you can’t search by Address or by Officer.
This presents a number of challenges when searching for Articles of Incorporation:
- You have to search each business one-at-a-time, and individually - There’s no way to batch them
- You have to know which state you are looking in before you search - If you don’t, you will be looking in the wrong place
- Fees - Some states have a fee per search you run
- Account registrations - Some state databases require registration, and for you to be signed in each time
- Customer errors on applications - If your customer makes mistakes or lists the wrong state, you will be looking in the wrong place
- Each SOS database works differently - The interfaces are not standardized at all, so the person on your team doing these searches needs to learn how to use the databases for all 50 states
- Human error - The person running these searches manually can make mistakes that software won’t while searching
- No close matching - Sometimes businesses will use a “Doing Business As” name on their application instead of their legal name, and the SOS databases are not set up to return close or possible matches like a business verification software is
- This process is entirely manual - There is no way to automate it when taking this manual approach
- Ongoing compliance is nearly impossible - You have to go back and check this information again on a regular cadence to be compliant, stacking up the effects of all of these challenges over time
Did you know?
Middesk’s SOS API can automate this process for you at scale if you onboard dozens or hundreds of businesses each month.
A company’s Articles of Incorporation are key pieces of KYB verification information that help to prove the company’s legitimacy at the top of your onboarding funnel. At scale, manually searching each SOS database for every business is not going to be sustainable. Middesk Verify allows you to skip all that hassle by searching all Secretary of State portals at once.
And though a business name, address, and EIN is a great top of funnel KYB risk assessment factor, it’s not the only information you need if you’re performing CDD or EDD, and Middesk can provide significantly more information to help with this risk scoring than any of the SOS databases can.
Reach out to our sales team and request a demo to learn how Middesk can help you track down Articles of Incorporation, and the other useful business verification details you need in minutes. If you want to see how it works in action right now, check out our on-demand product demo of Middesk Verify:
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