my sources

The meticulousness of your records can help you track the performance of your business. You can’t easily identify patterns, calculate ratios or make future decisions without these records. These records are also required to back up your financial statements and when filing tax returns. These include income statements (profit and loss statements) and balance sheets.

Most states have corporate departments or secretaries of state offices who require companies to provide an official statement of ownership. These documents are available online in the majority of cases. You can search for these records by name of the company and most websites will have the names of officers and directors, addresses and other information about the business. Certain private companies or firms create business directories. These directories can include the city of a company’s headquarters or where it’s registered. They may also include contact information, the primary officer or officers, as well as a short profile of the type of business the company is involved with.

Many cities require that any person or company that operates an activity within the city file a registration and a lot of cities have placed these documents online. Some counties have fictitious company name indexes where the top officers of a partnership as well as their addresses are listed. Some states maintain an inventory of all fictitious names for businesses. Counties, the secretary of state and corporate departments have also made these online.