Hawaii Secretary of State Business Search

The state of Hawaii makes it relatively simple to look up business information through the website of the Secretary of State. Below we'll walk through the steps for doing this, and show you some additional resources you might not know about.

There are any number of reasons you might need this information. It's absolutely critical when performing due diligence and for Know Your Client (KYC) purposes. If you're only performing these kinds of searches occasionally, Hawaii's search portal allows you to find the information you're looking for quickly and easily. If you're searching records like these in high numbers, there are some tools you'll want to know about, but we'll come back to that in just a moment.

You can find the Hawaii Business Express search page linked above. The landing page looks like this:

The search interface is simple, only providing the opportunity to limit results to those that 'begin with' or 'contain' your search term. You can also search by the name of the Registered Agent, using the option to the right of the screen.

When you perform the search, you'll be directed to the results page. As a happy surprise, you'll find more filtering options here, including the record type (entity, trade name, reservation, etc.), the type of business (Corporation, LLC, Partnership, etc.), and the current status (active, expired, or merged). Filtering for only active companies cleans up the search results page, like so:

The results are sorted by company name in alphabetical order. You cannot reverse the default order, or sort by another field.

On the results page, you'll see each company's name, the record type, its File Number, and its status (all active here, since the search results were filtered).

Clicking on the business name for any of the records will bring you to the details page for that business. All of the additional information is displayed vertically on a single page, so we'll look at what's here from top to bottom.

At the top of the page, you'll find General Info for the business:

In addition to the information you saw on the results page, you can see the purpose of the business, the state in which it was incorporated, the initial registration date, and contact information for the business itself, and for the Registered Agent.

Using the button at the top right, you can grab the information on this page as a PDF. You can also sign up for reminders and alerts about changes to the business record, but for that, you need to create an account.

Scrolling down further, you'll find a list of the filings:

The list is just that - a list. You can't view or download copies of any of these documents.

Scrolling more, you'll find a list of the company's officers:

And finally, 'Other Filings' for the business:

If you follow the prompt at the bottom, you can find a list of documents that are available for purchase.

They're available for a fee, and if you're hoping for a viable preview, you'll be disappointed:

There's nothing wrong with your display; that's the resolution that is available as a preview.

One last thing. You might have noticed a tempting offer on the main landing page. Hawaii does offer an 'Entity List Builder' service, through which you can build a customized list of businesses registered in Hawaii, refined by entity type, zip code, date, and status. That is also available at a cost - a one-time fee per record, or a monthly subscription service.

Hawaii offers a fair amount of business information at no cost, and their search interface - with the additional filters available on the results page - makes the process relatively smooth and simple for each search. If you need to search for hundreds - or even thousands - of these records each month, though, this would quickly consume a lot of time. Furthermore, Secretary of State data is different from one state to another, so combining and integrating data from multiple states is complex.