how to apply for an llc in california [Pictures]

Last updated : Aug 25, 2022

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this is gonna be fun this is gonna be fun you wanna start a company i'll show you how so let's go to this california secretary of state website because this is how you start an llc and i think a lot of people are interested in this so here's what we did let's start over we're going to go to sos.ca.gov this is the california secretary of state website this is the only place that you need to go to start a company an llc for that matter let's talk about how to do it click on business and then we're going to go down here to ooh look at that it's under hot topics cool number seven forms samples and fees for business entities and if you need tips those are here too all right so we're going to click on the form samples and fees section so we can look at the type of forms that are available to someone who's just going here and checking it out and trying to figure this out on their own you can see there's two sections there's corporation and there's limited liability company two very different options most people are going to want to form an llc most people need an llc there's very few people that need corporation status all right so file online fastest service i always recommend filing these documents online totally totally the best way to do it if you have to mail it in it's going to take weeks i've done both and filing it online is way better so in order to form an llc in california you're going to want to click on llc formation you can see that the filing fee is seventy dollars there is a certified copy fee which is five dollars copies are free anyways we're gonna hit the start button this is a privacy warning you can scroll through this and read what they do with your privacy and the information that you uh submit some people are interested in reading it some people don't i asked my question or my attorney about it and we were good to go all right so here is where you fill out the limited liability company name notice that it says don't include llc or llc period in the name you don't need to include any of that the llc will be added to the end of your name so if i wanted to start vaniter llc i would simply type in vaniter right here is where you're going to choose the llc identifier so if you want it to be vanity or llc you'll pick vanity or llc if i wanted to be vanader limited liability co that's what i would choose and this is the name that's going to show up on your official tax records and your statement of information and articles of organization with the state of california this is what's going to show up name reservation check this box if you have reserved a name and would like to apply the reservation to this llc program now correct me if i'm wrong somebody but i'm fairly certain that the reservation name is a service that california provides to where if you want to reserve a business name but you're not ready to pay and start for it yet you can pay them to do so but we'll find that out another time okay we don't have one of those so we're gonna go to next here's where you're gonna put up uh put in your business address enter the initial street address of the designated office and if different the initial mailing address of the llc a lot of people have different business addresses and different mailing addresses for their llc's there's a ton of reasons why you'd want to do something like that or why you would have to do something like that and so they want to know if the business resides in california or where it resides in california everybody's trying to get a piece so just put in the address you can use your house i do if it's the same as the mailing address just hit yes just go to next agent of process so you can have an individual or a california registered agent an attorney or there's a registered agent in california you can choose but you can type in uh like a legit like registered agent service or you can just have an individual basically the secretary of state wants to make sure that if they want to get a hold of you they can and so that's why you put the registered agent in there you can't put a po box it has to be a place where you can receive mail it has to be a place where someone could get a hold of you and maybe serve you with papers to uh appear in court for example so if you feel comfortable with that and that's something you can handle you can be your own registered agent i have my attorney be my registered agent because i don't i move around a lot and all the time and you know i just pay him a couple bucks you know a couple bucks a year just to take care of that for me it's not really that big of a burden or you can pay a registered agent that provides that service you can go on online and look for registered agents and they'll they'll teach you and i'll teach you they'll do that all for you we have the first name okay this is all for the service of process of the individual let me go to next and the management structure okay is gonna be this is where a lot of people get confused who will be managing the llc select the management structure now if you have questions you can click on filing tips and this will tell you but it doesn't give you a whole lot of information in my opinion having one manager is the best right to start your own llc and then if you start another venture with another partner or you want to start another partner just start a second llc and both of your llc's can be the managing members that's how i prefer to do it because partnerships are kind of risky but anyways let's circle back to this real quick so i can explain it before i move on the llc will be managed by you have one manager more than one manager or all llc members so one manager is going to be the most common if you're starting your own llc now if you're starting an llc with a business partner for example like your sister or friend or anyone really doesn't matter you can select all llc members and then that will make sure that you all have managing authority however that means that when you want to open up a bank account you have to go down to the bank together these are things that you have to do together right so there are strings attached to it but you can always change this later on too it's not a problem there are forms that you can file with the secretary of state to remove members from the llc so don't think that once you do it it's done forever organizer electronic signature all right so this is the perfect person that's organizing or organizing or putting together the llc right so sometimes it's a company like legalzoom or inc file sometimes it's yourself but basically you're going to put this down right your name your email not the company name or the company email but yours so you have to acknowledge that you're the person forming the llc and that all this information is true and correct they need someone on the hook for that okay so type in the organizer name um your email and then double check the email uh what's this file date the future file date oh okay so this is if you want to file the llc you want to put it all together right now pay for it and then file it in january let me tell you why that might be a good re

Thanks for your comment Nichol Rigsby, have a nice day.
- Stephen Akre, Staff Member

hey this is attorney elizabeth weinstein and today we're going to talk about how to file an llc in california step by step so the first thing you need to do before you go ahead and create your llc in california your limited liability company in california you need to have a few decisions already made and a few pieces of information put together the first thing is the name of your llc most people just call it such and such llc there are other suffixes that you can use and you will talk about that when we dive into the website the second is you need the address for your business you're going to need both a street address a physical address and you can also have a mailing address that's different like a p.o box usually a po box isn't going to count for a street address the next thing you're going to need is the name of your registered agent a registered agent is someone it could be a person or another business that has a street address that's it's going to accept any legal documents on your behalf which doesn't happen at very often but you still have to have this requirement you can do it yourself but if you work from home that means that your home address is going to be on the public record which you may not want to do so you can select an outside registered agent to provide this service for you some registered agents will also let you use that address as the street address for your small business so when you want to create your llc in california you can do that straight at the website for the california secretary of state here's what it looks like filing online there's a number of filings that you can do including also forming a corporation or a state registration for your trademark and things like that but we're going to be filing an llc today so we click on llc formation here they are letting you know that the filing fee in california is seventy dollars plus an extra five dollars if you want a certified copy of your filings i recommend paying the extra five bucks to get that certified copy because sometimes you need it for for setting up your bank account or other purposes this is letting you know that everything that you file is public so something to be aware of if you're if you're not aware of this already is that any information you put in here including any addresses are in the public record in the database that anybody can search so you're accepting all the various policies so the first decision is putting in your name of your llc so let's say i'm going to put in weinstein consultant and i'm just going to use the llc designation but there's a lot of other choices you can put dots with the llc you can call it a limited liability company and limited liability co ltd liability company ltd liability co i would recommend most of the time you want to just do llc because it keeps the name shorter okay but in some cases if you're just using one word it maybe make more sense to have a different ending here i'm just going to put llc now you can reserve the name of an llc that you're going to file later i don't hardly ever do this because we just decide we're going to do it and go ahead and create the filing but just be aware this is something you can do also before you go ahead and form your llc you may want to search the database and make sure no one else has dibs on that name so here we're filling out the street address for the business you can use the address lookup tool which will help you format the address correctly but you don't actually have to do this if your street address is also your mailing address because you have an office then you would go ahead and just click yes here if it's not it gives you an opportunity to put in any address including addresses in other countries but i'm just going to say yes now the service of process is who is going to be there to accept legal documents on your behalf if you click individual you can fill in anything your name with your address if you click california registered agent you're going to be selecting something from this list below now you don't want to just randomly select something here you want to have already set up an account with them otherwise it's very awkward so let's say i set up an account with northwest registered agent and i'm going to use them as a registered agent for this business but i could also put myself as an individual with my address the management structure of your llc is who is going to have control over the day-to-day aspects of the business to do filings etc if you're a one-owner business most the time i just have all llc members here because it makes the operating agreement that much more simple however if you have an llc where you have three or 10 or 50 different members or which is the name of what an owner is called for an llc it doesn't make sense to have 20 different people who can all do stuff on behalf of the llc that's just a mess so it can make sense to have the members be more owners like the shareholders of a company like i own shares of stock in public companies but i can't like tell the companies what to do on a day-to-day basis right so you may have one manager or multiple managers running that business in this case i'm just going to say all llc members the organizer of the business is the human person who is filing this so for my clients i'm putting myself if you're doing it for yourself for your own lsa you'd put your own name here so i'm putting myself and then we have the file date the file date is the date that your llc actually starts most the time you're going to have it be the same time that you're filing however occasionally you want to be some future date so for example let's say you're creating an llc in mid-december and you're not planning to actually start this business until january 1st so what you can do is you can create the llc in mid-december and have it be effective as of january 1st that's the best way to start a business on january 1st is to file it sometime in december so that we can go through the process and be effective on january 1st because otherwise if you try to file it on january 1st it'll end up not going through until later because it's a holiday right but here i don't want a future date now the last thing that you're going to do is review all this information and make sure that it's correct and then you're going to enter in a payment one thing to be aware of you want to do the filing and certified copy that's what i generally recommend and for the credit card here you can't use american express which is always an issue for me because that's my main credit card for my business you have to use a mastercard or a visa now if you don't have a credit card to use to file this you're not going to be able to file it online so you're going to be able to write a check to file it via mail that will take longer i'm not submitting this right now because this isn't a real filing but the next last thing you do have to put in the money is submit and then it's going to take a few days to be approved hopefully it will be approved a human person looks at this to make sure that it's correct so it might take two days it might take a

Thanks TinuP your participation is very much appreciated
- Stephen Akre

About the author

Stephen Akre

I've studied sociology of finance at Knox College in Galesburg and I am an expert in meta-ethics. I usually feel bouncy. My previous job was physical therapy assistant I held this position for 20 years, I love talking about water sports and hammocking. Huge fan of Danny Thomas I practice artistic swimming and collect bobbleheads.