Someone asked your Alabama LLC for a certificate of good standing

The Bottom Line for Alabama LLCs

Order it from the Secretary of State's Business Services Division, online if you want it in your hands immediately or on the current paper application if you do not. It speaks to your company's standing on the filing office's records and to nothing else.

Alabama draws the line between records standing and tax standing explicitly, and it draws it on the face of its own application form. The filing office's document involves no revenue clearance step, which is exactly why it can be printed the moment your payment clears. The same design means it answers a narrower question than the phrase good standing suggests to a lender, and the narrower answer is sometimes not the one being asked for.

What Alabama Actually Calls It

Alabama issues this as the Certificate of Existence, through Office of the Alabama Secretary of State, Business Services Division. Ask a bank or another state's filing office for a certificate of good standing and this is what you send them.

It is issued for an entity indexed or registered by the Office of the Alabama Secretary of State. The Secretary of State's own application form draws a line between this document and tax good standing, which is a separate certificate issued by the Alabama Department of Revenue.

Two Documents, Similar Names

Alabama has a second document with a similar name. The Alabama Department of Revenue issues a Certificate of Compliance, which covers state tax standing rather than the entity's filings. That is not the same paper as the Certificate of Existence, and the two are not interchangeable. Ask whoever requested it which one they mean.

Why You Need One

Foreign registration is the workhorse case here: another state's filing office will not process your Alabama LLC's registration without recent proof from Alabama. Lenders ask at underwriting, particularly on equipment finance and commercial real estate, and an SBA lender will often want the tax side as well. A buyer's counsel collects one in any sale of the business. Two situations generate fewer requests than owners expect. Opening a deposit account rarely calls for it, and license renewals ask only occasionally, so read the renewal instructions rather than buying one on spec.

What It Costs in Alabama

Alabama charges $28 for the Certificate of Existence ordered online and $25 on paper.

Where this fee comes from: "Immediate Processing: You may acquire a Certificate of Existence online at www.sos.alabama.gov. Click on Business Services (under picture), scroll down to Certificate of Existence. The online service must be paid by credit card and is $28.00 with immediate processing"

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Existence online and by mail.

Immediate print online, or 24 to 48 hours processing by mail.

Order it on the Alabama site

The online order must be paid by credit card and prints from the requester's own printer, bearing the seal and an authentication number.

The trap in Alabama is a stale PDF. An older version of the application form is still reachable from the Secretary of State's website, and it quotes amounts and an expedited tier that the current form and the current fee schedule no longer carry. Send that form with that payment and the office has to bounce it. Check the revision date in the footer of whatever PDF you downloaded, then match the amount against the fee schedule the office publishes today. One more detail before you start: the office takes these applications by mail, by courier or through its own online service, and its instructions say telephone and email applications will not be processed. The online order is card only, and it prints on your own printer with the seal and an authentication number a recipient can check.

1. 1

   Pull your entity record on the Secretary of State's business search

   Find your LLC and check the exact name spelling, the formation date and the status shown. The certificate is generated from that record, so anything that looks wrong on screen will look wrong on the document.

2. 2

   Use the online service if you need it today

   The Secretary of State sells the certificate through its own business services pages and delivers the file for you to print straight away. Payment is by card, and the printed sheet carries the state seal and an authentication number.

3. 3

   Download the current application if you are ordering on paper

   Take the form fresh from the Secretary of State's business downloads page and check the revision date in the footer before you fill it in. Send it by mail or by courier; the office's instructions rule out phone and email applications.

4. 4

   Match your payment to the schedule published now

   Check the amount against the Secretary of State's current fee schedule rather than the figure printed on an older copy of the form, and note that the online and paper routes are not priced identically. A short payment sends the application back to you.

5. 5

   Start the tax document separately if it was requested

   If your counterparty wants your tax position confirmed, that request goes to the Department of Revenue and is ordered through its own service. Begin it early, because it is not something the filing office can print for you.

6. 6

   Check the issued certificate before you forward it

   Read it for the exact entity name and the issue date, then send the file you received rather than a rescanned printout. A recipient verifying the document will use the authentication number on its face.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Alabama

No separate tax clearance from a revenue agency is part of it. What Alabama requires to be current with its own filing office is not something the state publishes, so this page does not answer it.

Alabama splits the two ideas across two agencies. The Secretary of State's Certificate of Existence is a records document and carries no revenue clearance step. Tax good standing is a separate document, the Certificate of Compliance, issued by the Alabama Department of Revenue.

The only prerequisite the form states applies to limited partnerships, not LLCs: "Domestic LP formed before 2011 must have a Certificate of Information on file before a Certificate of Existence can be processed."

Because the filing office's certificate is a records document, what puts you out of standing on that side is a records problem: an entity that is not properly indexed or registered, or a formation era filing that was never completed. Alabama's own application flags one such condition, and it applies to older limited partnerships rather than to LLCs. The tax side is where most owners actually slip, and a lapse there is invisible on the filing office's paper. A lender who accepts the records certificate has learned nothing about your tax account, and one who wanted the tax answer will send you back for a different document, so it is worth establishing which of the two questions your counterparty is really asking.

How Long It Stays Good in Alabama

Alabama publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Existence stays current. Whoever asked you for it does: banks, lenders and other states' filing offices each set their own recency rule, and that window is theirs, not Alabama's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

Order it when the request lands rather than while you are assembling paperwork. The online route hands the document over as soon as payment clears, so there is little reason to buy one early and let it age in a folder. If your counterparty has set a cutoff on the issue date, ask for that number in writing. Then order after your last pending filing has posted rather than before, so the certificate describes the company as it will look on the day of the closing.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, Alabama Secretary of State, Authentications, Trademarks & Lands Division will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $5 per document.

What We Could Not Confirm for Alabama

These pages only state what a primary source establishes. For Alabama we could not confirm the following, so this page does not answer it:

• what must be current before the state will issue it

Who to Ask in Alabama

The Business Services Division of the Office of the Alabama Secretary of State answers everything about the filing office's certificate: what your entity record shows, which application form is current, and what the office will accept. The Alabama Department of Revenue answers everything about tax standing, including whether your account is clear and what its own document says, and the Secretary of State's staff cannot answer for it. If your counterparty's checklist does not name an agency, one email to it saves you the price of the wrong document.

Sources

• sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/CertificateofExistence.pdf
• sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/form-files/FeeSchedule.pdf
• sos.alabama.gov/sites/default/files/form-files/business-files/sosfdf-2.pdf
• sos.alabama.gov/business-entities/business-downloads

Every figure on this page was read from an Alabama government source, not from a formation service. Confidence in this record: high. See our editorial policy for how these are verified and corrected.