Idaho Secretary of State Business Search

The state of Idaho 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, Idaho'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 Idaho Business Search page linked above. When you first arrive, the interface is as simple as can be - nothing more than a text box. But let's go ahead and click the 'Advanced' search button. When you do, the search page looks like this:

Here, you can look up any business that starts with or contains your search term. You can also search by the name of the Registered Agent. Happily, you can limit your search to only active companies. You can even search only for companies whose initial filing date fell between a beginning and end date.

When you perform the search, the results open below the search bar, rather than in a new display. It's deceptive if you don't realize this; it can seem as if the search button had no effect. When you do scroll down, the results are displayed like this:

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

On the results page, under 'Form Info' you'll see each company's name, ID number, and the type of business (its legal structure). To the right, you'll find its Status (all active here, since the search was limited to those results), the initial filing date, and the name of the Registered Agent (where there is one).

Clicking on any of the records opens a small window on the right of the page, like so:

In this window, you can see more information about the business, over and above what was displayed in the results: the state in which it was formed, the term (usually perpetual), and contact information for the business, and the Registered Agent. You can also see the initial filing date repeated here, and the date on which the next Annual Report is due to be filed.

Clicking on the 'View History' button at the bottom of that small window opens a full-screen window, displaying the filing history for the business. It's initially displayed with all the entries collapsed, but when you expand them, they look like this:

For each of these entries, you can click the link to download a PDF copy of the document in question.

Idaho offers a reasonable amount of business information at no cost, and their search interface 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.