Someone wants proof your South Dakota LLC is still on the register

The Bottom Line for South Dakota LLCs

Order it through the Secretary of State's online business services system and nowhere else. South Dakota takes no mailed form, no counter request and no fax for this one.

The office states that restriction in a single line on the ordering page, and the only other limit it publishes is about entity type rather than about whether your company is behind on anything. Past those two sentences South Dakota says very little. Its general filing fee schedule doesn't itemize the certificate, and the state's LLC statute sits on a legislature site that served us no readable text, so several questions this page would like to close stay open.

What South Dakota Actually Calls It

South Dakota calls it a Certificate of Good Standing / Existence, issued by South Dakota Secretary of State.

The Secretary of State's ordering page does not describe what the certificate attests to. It says only who may buy one: "Anyone can request a Certificate of Good Standing/Existence for any business entity registered with the Secretary of State in South Dakota EXCEPT for General Partnerships, Reserved Names, Registered Names and Doing Business As (DBA)-Business Names."

South Dakota also uses Certificate of Good Standing, Certificates of Good Standing/Existence for documents in this family.

Why You Need One

Three requests generate almost all of these orders: another state's filing office wants one attached to a foreign registration, a bank or an SBA lender wants one in an underwriting file, and a purchaser's lawyer wants one in a closing binder. Commercial landlords and large customers ask during onboarding, though far less often. Worth knowing before any of them do: South Dakota lets anyone order a certificate for any registered entity, so a counterparty checking up on you does not need your cooperation to do it.

What It Costs in South Dakota

South Dakota charges $20 for the Certificate of Good Standing / Existence.

Where this fee comes from: Filing Fee $20

How to Order It

You can order the Certificate of Good Standing / Existence online.

South Dakota does not publish a turnaround time for the Certificate of Good Standing / Existence, so this page does not quote one.

Order it on the South Dakota site

The certificate is ordered from the Secretary of State's Business Services Online system by entering the entity's Business ID. Payment is by Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express debit or credit card.

The order runs on the entity's Business ID rather than its name, so look that number up in the state's business search first and confirm the record that comes back is yours and not a similarly named company. Certificates carry a verification number, and the same part of the site has a box where a recipient can type that number in and confirm the document is genuine, which is worth mentioning to anyone suspicious of an emailed PDF. One thing not to go hunting for: the office's general filing fee schedule doesn't list this certificate at all, and the expedited service line on that schedule sits under general office services with nothing tying it to certificate orders, so don't assume speed is for sale here.

1. 1

   Look up your Business ID

   Search the state's business database for the LLC and note the Business ID it returns. The order form asks for that number, not the company name, and a name search is where people stop when two similar entities come back.

2. 2

   Open the certificate request in Business Services Online

   The request lives inside the Secretary of State's online business services system. There is no paper equivalent to fall back on, so if the system is down the answer is to wait rather than to print something.

3. 3

   Check the entity the system returns

   Compare the legal name, the formation date and the status against your own records before you pay. An order placed against the wrong Business ID produces a perfectly real certificate for somebody else's company.

4. 4

   Pay by card and save the file

   Payment is taken at the end of the order. Save the PDF where you can find it again, along with the verification number printed on it.

5. 5

   Send it with the verification number

   When you forward the certificate, tell the recipient they can confirm it themselves through the Secretary of State's site. That heads off the most common objection to an emailed copy.

What Puts You Out of Standing in South Dakota

We could not confirm what South Dakota requires to be current before it will issue the Certificate of Good Standing / Existence.

The South Dakota Department of Revenue publishes a tax clearance request form, but neither that form nor the Secretary of State’s certificate page ties tax clearance to this certificate. Unconfirmed either way.

South Dakota's ordering page draws one line and it is about entity type: general partnerships, reserved names, registered names and DBA business names cannot have a certificate. It says nothing about a company that is behind on its filings. We could not read the state's LLC statute either, because the legislature publishes its code through a script-driven page that returned no text to us, so this page will not tell you that a delinquent South Dakota LLC gets refused and will not tell you it gets issued. If your annual report is late, filing it before you order removes the question rather than answering it.

How Long It Stays Good in South Dakota

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

With nothing to mail, the sensible habit is to order after the request arrives rather than to keep a copy on file against a future need. If a lender or a receiving state's filing office wants one issued inside a set number of days, that window is theirs and you meet it by ordering fresh on the day the package goes out. Where a recipient is slow and your certificate ages in their queue, give them the verification number before you buy a second one; confirming the original on the state's own page sometimes settles the objection without another order.

Using It Outside the United States

For use abroad, South Dakota Secretary of State will authenticate the certificate with an apostille for $25 per document.

What We Could Not Confirm for South Dakota

These pages only state what a primary source establishes. For South Dakota 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 South Dakota

The Secretary of State's Business Services Division in Pierre issues this and runs the online system it is sold through, and it is the office to call when an order will not go through or when a business search returns a company name you don't recognize as yours. Tax questions belong elsewhere. The Department of Revenue publishes its own tax clearance request form, and we found nothing on either agency's site connecting that form to this certificate, so treat them as separate errands unless somebody tells you in writing that they are not.

Sources

• sosenterprise.sd.gov/BusinessServices/Business/CertOfExistenceInstr.aspx
• sdsos.gov/general-information/filing-fees.aspx
• sdsos.gov/business-services/corporations/default.aspx

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