The Hawaii document your bank asked for goes by three different names

The Bottom Line for Hawaii LLCs

Order it yourself through the Business Registration Division. The order takes a few minutes, no lawyer or filing service is involved, and the only real decision is whether to pay for expedited review.

What catches Hawaii owners out is the naming. The division's own pages, the LLC fee schedule and the statute each use a different label for one document, so searching the state site for the exact phrase a mainland bank used will often return nothing useful and leave you thinking Hawaii issues no such thing. It does. The label printed next to the price on the fee schedule is the one the office bills against, and any of the three will get you the same paper at the counter.

What Hawaii Actually Calls It

Hawaii calls it a Certificate of Good Standing, issued by Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Business Registration Division.

The DCCA describes the document as official proof of business registration and compliance, and describes the online lookup behind it as a way to determine whether a company or entity exists and whether it is in good standing. HRS 428-1203 makes a certificate by the director under the seal of the department, as to the existence or nonexistence of facts relating to a limited liability company, prima facie evidence of those facts.

Hawaii also uses Good Standing Certificate, Certificate of Compliance for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Two requests generate most of these. The first is registering the LLC to do business in another state, where the receiving filing office wants Hawaii's confirmation that the company exists and is current before it will process the registration. The second is a bank or a lender at underwriting, most often when the account is being opened from the mainland by someone who has never seen your organizing documents. After those two the volume drops sharply: a large customer running vendor onboarding, a landlord on a commercial lease, or a buyer's counsel during a sale will ask occasionally. Read the request carefully before you order, because Hawaii's state contracting process and several license renewals ask instead for a tax clearance from the Department of Taxation, which is a different document from a different agency and cannot be bought from the division.

What It Costs in Hawaii

Hawaii charges $5 for the Certificate of Good Standing.

Expedited service is available: Expedited review for $10.

Where this fee comes from: "Good Standing Certificate (Certificate of Compliance) | $5.00 | $10.00" (Fees / Uniform Limited Liability Company Act, Chapter 428; columns are FILING FEE and EXPEDITED REVIEW). HRS 428-1301(a)(13) states: "Good standing certificate, $5".

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Good Standing online, by mail, in person, by phone and by fax.

Hawaii does not publish a turnaround time for the Certificate of Good Standing, so this page does not quote one.

Order it on the Hawaii site

The DCCA still links the older Hawaii Business Express address hbe.ehawaii.gov/documents/search.html, which now redirects to the new portal at hbe.dcca.hawaii.gov with the notice "The Business Registration Division new online portal can be found at https://hbe.dcca.hawaii.gov/. All services offered through Hawaii Business Express will be available via this new portal."

The purchase lives inside the business record rather than on an order form. You search for the entity, open its record, and the option to buy sits behind the tab for available documents, which is the last one across and easy to scroll past. Watch the web address you land on. The division still links its older Hawaii Business Express URL from some pages, and that address now redirects to a newer portal, so a bookmark or a printed instruction sheet from last year will bounce you before it works. If the portal will not take your card, the division also accepts these requests by phone, email, mail, fax and over the counter. One thing you cannot plan around: Hawaii sells an expedited review of this certificate without publishing how long either the standard or the expedited review takes, so paying for priority here buys you a place in the queue, not a date you can promise a lender.

1. 1

   Look the company up in the state's business search

   Search by entity name and open the record. Confirm the registration is active and that the annual report line looks current before you spend anything, because the record is what the certificate is drawn from.

2. 2

   Open the tab for buying available documents

   The purchase is the last tab on the entity record, not a separate application. If you cannot see it, you are probably on the old portal address and have not been redirected yet.

3. 3

   Decide about expedited review before you pay

   Hawaii prices priority handling without publishing a clock for either speed. Take it when a counterparty has given you a fixed date, and skip it when nobody is waiting.

4. 4

   Save the certificate as a file, not a printout

   Recipients almost always want a PDF attached to an email. Keep the original file rather than scanning a printed copy, which loses quality and invites questions about whether it was altered.

5. 5

   Use another channel if the portal refuses you

   The division takes these requests by phone, email, mail, fax and in person. A card that keeps failing online is not a reason to give up on the order.

6. 6

   Start the apostille separately if it is going abroad

   The Lieutenant Governor's office handles authentication by mail and does not offer a faster option. Send the certificate there only once you know the receiving country needs an apostille.

What Puts You Out of Standing in Hawaii

We found no separate tax clearance requirement from a revenue agency, though Hawaii does not publish a statement either way, so treat that as no requirement found rather than an assurance. What Hawaii requires to be current with its own filing office is not something the state publishes, so this page does not answer it.

Hawaii's Department of Taxation issues a separate Tax Clearance Certificate (Form A-6) used for state contracting and for some licence renewals. Nothing on the DCCA pages checked ties it to the Good Standing Certificate.

The lever in Hawaii is the annual report. The division ties timely report filing to keeping the entity in good standing, and it assesses a late charge for each year you are behind, so a company that skipped two cycles pays for both before it is current again. Reports are batched by quarter rather than falling on a single statewide date, and the division posts a public reminder as each quarter's batch comes due, which is why owners who moved here from a one-deadline state so often miss theirs. If you are behind, file the outstanding reports online first, wait for the record to update, and order the certificate after that. Ordering first only produces a refusal you then have to chase.

How Long It Stays Good in Hawaii

Hawaii publishes nothing about how long the Certificate of Good Standing 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 Hawaii's. Ask what it is, and order the certificate once you know.

Order it once someone has asked, not in advance. Nothing about this certificate improves with age, and the party who wants it, whether that is a bank, a licensing board or another state's filing office, is the one holding the clock. If their request comes with a freshness requirement, work backwards from their deadline and take the expedited option when it is tight, since Hawaii has published no standard turnaround you could plan against. A certificate that has gone stale is not renewed. You buy another one, and the new one carries the day you bought it.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, Office of the Lieutenant Governor will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $3 per document.

What We Could Not Confirm for Hawaii

These pages only state what a primary source establishes. For Hawaii 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 Hawaii

The Business Registration Division, inside the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, issues this certificate and is the office to call about whether an annual report has posted or why a purchase failed. Tax questions belong elsewhere: the Department of Taxation issues Hawaii's tax clearance certificate, and division staff cannot see the state of a tax account. Authentication is a third office again. The Office of the Lieutenant Governor apostilles Hawaii documents for use overseas, works by mail, and says plainly that expedited handling is unavailable there, so book that leg into your timeline before the certificate is even ordered.

Sources

• cca.hawaii.gov/breg/online/cog/
• cca.hawaii.gov/breg/registration/dllc/fees/
• cca.hawaii.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Form-Fee-Schedule-12-2022.pdf
• cca.hawaii.gov/breg/faqs/
• capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol08_Ch0401-0429/HRS0428/HRS_0428-1301.htm
• capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol08_Ch0401-0429/HRS0428/HRS_0428-1203.htm
• cca.hawaii.gov/breg/release-second-quarter-hawaii-annual-business-reports-due/
• ltgov.hawaii.gov/application-for-apostille-or-certification-of-documents/

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