10 Questions to Ask Your Registered Agent and Compliance Provider Before You Renew
Most legal teams renew their registered agent and compliance provider without a second look. The invoice arrives, the number looks familiar, and it gets approved.
But that invoice is rarely the whole cost of entity compliance. Some of it is state fees you can't avoid. Some of it is what your provider charges for its services. The rest never shows up on an invoice at all: the hours your team spends keeping a tracker current, the outside counsel bills for cleanup, and the late fees when something slips.
Renewal is the one moment you have leverage to see the full picture. These 10 questions will help.
Pricing
1. What does each fee include, and what's billed on top?
An annual report line on your invoice usually holds two things: the fee the state charges and your provider's fee. The state fee is fixed. What matters is what you get for the rest. Does it cover preparation, filing, confirmation and updating your records, or are some of those billed separately? And ask whether there's a service fee on transactional filings, such as amendments or good standing requests, on top of the state fee.
2. Is data management or a compliance calendar included, or billed separately?
Some providers charge separately for the tools that track your deadlines and store your documents. Find out whether you're paying extra for the data you rely on.
3. How is our bill built?
Pricing models vary: per entity, per state, per service, per filing, or a mix. None is wrong, but you should be able to look at your entity list and predict next year's bill. If you can't, ask your provider to walk you through it.
4. Are there fees for document retrieval, certificates or expedited service?
These charges are small one at a time and easy to miss. They add up quickly during a financing, an audit or a busy closing season.
Service
5. Do you file annual reports automatically, or do we request each one?
If your team has to start every filing, the provider is holding your documents, not managing your compliance. That gap is where deadlines get missed.
6. How fast do service of process notices reach us, and how?
A lawsuit notice that sits in a queue for days shortens your time to respond. Ask how notices are delivered and how quickly.
7. If a filing you handle is late, what happens and who pays?
Get a clear answer on responsibility for penalties and reinstatement costs before you need one.
Visibility and growth
8. Can we see every entity's status in one place without contacting support?
If checking good standing means sending an email and waiting, your team will keep its own spreadsheet as a backup. That's time you're paying for twice.
9. What would it cost to add 5 entities or 3 new states next year?
Growth is when compliance costs jump. Price the next year now, not after the acquisition closes.
10. Do filing confirmations and notices land on the entity record automatically?
If confirmations sit in someone's inbox and notices arrive as loose PDFs, your records drift out of date, and the cleanup lands on your team or outside counsel when diligence comes around.
Put the answers to work
These answers fill in only part of the picture. To make the case in your 2027 budget, you also need to know where every entity stands today and what your team's time and outside counsel spend really add up to.
Filejet's team offers a complimentary Entity Status Review. We'll go through your entities with you and show you where each one stands, what's due next, and where your time and spend are going. Request your review.
Want to see how it works first? Book a 30-minute demo of Filejet's entity management and compliance automation platform.