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RI Business Records

Searching for Rhode Island state’s business records involves only one simple stop at the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s website. The steps below will give you a short overview on how to find Rhode Island business records using the Secretary of State’s website database.

How to Search the Database:

1. Start your records search by going to the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s website. This website is located at http://www.state.ri.us/.
2. Across the top of this page will be a horizontal site menu (it will be located directly underneath the page header). On this menu will be several links, one of which will be labeled ‘Corporations’ (it will be the fourth option from the right).
3. Once you are on the corporations page, you will see a site menu along the left hand side. This vertical site menu will be split into four different sections: ‘Corporations’, ‘Quick Links’, ‘Miscellaneous Filings’, and ‘Language’. You will want to locate the second section, which is labeled ‘Quick Links’.
4. Under the ‘Quick Links’ section, click on the ‘Corporate Database’ link (it will be the second option within this section).
5. From there, you will be taken to a form that you need to fill in to start your search query. On this form, you will have the option to fill in the corporation status, the “look in” option (selections include corporation name, corporation ID, agent name, officer name, purpose statement, or street address), the search terms you are looking for, and the search type (selections include show records with all of the above terms, show records with any of the above terms, or perform a search using Boolean operators).
6. Once you have entered in the criteria you want to search for, click ‘Submit’.
7. You will then be transported to a page that lists your search results. These results, which will include any corporations registered in Rhode Island that match your search criteria, will be sorted by how relevant they are to your search term(s).This list will state each corporations name, the corporation ID, the charter, the abandoned date (if any), and the company type.
8. To learn more information about an individual company, click on their name.
9. Doing this will take you to the details page for that company. Here you can find out the company’s ID number, the company’s purpose, their status, their charter, their chapter, the state they are located in, the duration, the file date, the effective date, the last report date, any annual report images that are available (categorized per year), their SIC code, their authorized shares, their business address, the name and address of their registered agent, the primary officer’s title, name, and address, and any application event information.
10. By clicking on the links under the ‘event information‘ section, you can find out more about the company’s corporation filing activities (including each file date and effective date of those filings), any fictitious name filing activities (including the keywords for, file date of, and abandon date of the fictitious name filings), and any mergers (including the name of the non-surviving entity, when the merger was filed, when the merger took effect).

Remember, these records are open to anyone and available at anytime. No matter who you are, where you live, or why you need to find a record on a registered Rhode Island business, you will have access to this useful database. There is no need to even register your name and/or e-mail address, give out your identity, or sign up for a password -- just type the URL into your browser and get instant access anytime.