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hey this is attorney elizabeth potts weinstein and today we're going to talk about do you need a dba for your online business a dba a doing business as registration which is sometimes also called a trade name or called an fbn a fictitious business name is a registration that you do with some government agency could be a county it could be the state that puts everyone out there in the world on notice that you're operating your business in a different name as a different name as a different brand name than your legal entity of your business so for example let's say you're a sole proprietor that means that your business is just your name your legal name so in my case would be elizabeth potts weinstein let's say i wanted to start a business and i didn't want to like form an llc or corporation or anything yet and i set up a website for my sewing business and so i created a business that was epw sewing well that epw sewing is not my legal name so i need to register that as a dba or as it's called in california and fbn the same thing can happen if you form an llc or corporation or you have a partnership for that matter and the train name that you use on your website in your marketing is a different name than the formal legal name of your business [Music] so why would you need a dba for an online business you might be thinking to yourself well i do all my business online i'm not really doing business in my state or in my county so why do i need to register anything with them well legally speaking even if you do your business online and your clients and customers are everywhere you the owner of this business as well as any employees that you have are physical people who are located in some physical location and so wherever you're located and if you're working from home your business is located there at your home in that state in that county so you have to fulfill the requirements of registering that fictitious business name or dba name now if you have a name of your business that's different than the legal name you might want to use that trade name on your bank accounts on your merchant accounts and contracts especially because you don't want people to see something on their credit card statement that is different than the name of your business it might make them confused and they'll do a chargeback so you want all that stuff to line up with the name that you use in your actual business so to be able to get the bank or a merchant account or anybody else to put your trade name on your accounts then you'll most likely need a dba registration the other reason you need a dba registration is so you're putting everybody on notice that that dba trade name that fbn is connected with the legal entity of your business if they have a dispute they know who their dispute is actually with this comes up the most often if someone has formed another legal entity an llc or corporation for their business but they're actually doing business online under just a trade name so and they're doing that for you know marketing purposes if someone doesn't see the name of your llc or your corporation on your website they're gonna think that it's just a sole proprietorship or partnership they're gonna think it's just you so they're gonna sue you personally instead of your llc you have to provide a paper trail that connects your llc to that business that you have online that trade name so you can prove that the llc or the corporation should be liable and not you personally how do you get a dba fbn trade name registration first you have to determine where you need to do that registration in your jurisdiction in your area in some places you do it with the state and in some places you do it with the county there's a few places where they don't even have that kind of registration but most places is either with the state or the county and you have to figure out how that works for you second you actually need to do the filing so there'll be some application to register your dba or fbn or trade name and there's some paperwork you have to have to fill out and send in occasionally you can do that online completely and sometimes you have to do it in person or on paper that you mail in the next thing you have to do is see if you are under any publishing requirements publishing requirements kind of this antiquated system from back before the internet existed where you put the world on notice that you're using this dba or fbn by publishing it in a newspaper there are in some places there's just the regular newspaper because that's the only newspaper that exists and in some places there are special legal newspapers typically larger cities sometimes you're required to publish it once and sometimes you're required to publish it multiple times so you have to find out what the exact requirements are and what information you need to put in that publication they'll tell you exactly what you need to do on your application but you just need to make sure that you're doing it right after you do the publication then you usually have to file some kind of affidavit or proof of the publication back with the county or the state where you originally registered if you don't do this your entire thing that all this stuff that you did doesn't count and then after that you probably will need to do some kind of renewal it might be in three years five years ten years seven years every place is a little bit different but most places you have to do some renewal process just a filing that you have to do saying yes you still use it and you pay an additional fee there are a few places where you don't have to do renewal but just assume that you probably will do and research it to make sure that that requirement applies to you [Music] let's look at a couple examples for how it works to get your fbn or dba or trade name the first one i'm looking at here is the county of santa clara and this is where the silicon valley is san jose california they have it called a fictitious business name statement and you register this with the county clerk they don't have online services for some reason and you can't do things in person because of cover 19. so you have to download the application from the website i'll show that to you in a second you can file filing fees and then you'll have to publish it when you look at the application which is you click here you get everything that you can file with them when you look at the actual pdf there are a number of things that you have to put in there obviously the fictitious business name that you're looking at here the address which is going to be in the public record so you want to think about if you operate a business out of your home you may want to what you know whether or not you're going to actually use that address it's something you want to consider if you want to have a business address instead you're going to check whether or not the legal entity is an individual a partnership an llc a corporation etc and your name and your address has to be in your actual location address so if you're the personal owner of this business in the sense of a social proprietorship it has to be yours but if it's the llc or corporation then it's the llc or the corporation is the owner of this fbm it's the first filing it's the first time you've done it it's not a renewal and you're signing this under penalty of perjury that everything in here is correct and then you go ahead and file this on the same application it gives you more information about what's allowed and what's not allowed in the application and then after you do that filing then you have to publish it so if it's a new one you're gonna have to publish it a total of four times in legal newspapers or regular newspapers the first time you publish it has to be within 30 days of the filing date this is important to not delay on because it can take at least a week if not two or three weeks to get this set up with the newspaper so you want to be on top of this and as i said your address will be part of this public database and public publication so next let's look at the county of los angeles now it may look like here that you're going to be doing an online filing it's not really an online filing what this is is that you can fill out the form online using their system but you're going to have to print it out and let me actually fill it in as if i'm doing a fictional business here i won't go all the way through to the very end so first you're verifying that no one else has it you would normally do a search here then let's say i'm doing epw sewing as my business you can have multiple fbns you can do all one time this is usually true and i'm at 123 main street i'm in los angeles i'm picking a random zip code that's in that area and the owner in this case i'm doing this as a pretend sole proprietorship so the owner is my name and i'm whoops i'm still doing 123 main street in los angeles 9001 and that's the registered owner then you have the name of the person who's going to sign it if you're signing the name of an llc that will be the name of the llc and then you'll put your name here and then i'm the owner then i can put in the business as being conducted by an individual let's say 12 to 20 20. i guess you can't do it in the future all right then what it does is it gives you a preview i'm obviously not going to submit this because it's not a real legit business or address or any of that kind of stuff so here we have the pdf that it's generated you don't print this out because it's just the preview to make sure you filled it out correctly so here's all the name of the business and my name and down here is where i would sign it under penalty of perjury and then the next page in los angeles county you have to get this notarized because you're filing it via mail if you did it in person if we didn't have cover 19 you wouldn't have to do this because that person would check your id right there but since some someone else is going to have to check your id it's going to be the notary so thirdly let's look at a completely different place this is nebraska in nebraska you do trade name filings with the state that's not something with the county and it's not called dba or fbn so you scroll all the way down here there's all kinds of different filings for llc's and corporations all this stuff and then the last one is for trade names trademarks and service marks so we would be doing a trade name the fee is a hundred dollars which is a bit more than filing in the filings in other places so they have a pdf a very simple pdf it doesn't have as much information and then they have the instructions the same kind of thing as in california you do have to publish it in a newspaper but this does only requires you to publish it once which is a lot easier also you similarly to every other place you have to file an affidavit of the publishing within 45 days so this is a short time frame because you have to arrange for it to be published it has to be published and then you have to send this in so you need to make sure that you don't miss it and have to start all over again one of the issues that i've run into with nebraska for example is that this publication has to happen in the county where the business is located and specifically in the town i've had trouble with some towns where they don't have a local newspaper anymore so you may have to search around for a newspaper that accepts this kind of publishing in nebraska you can also do this as an online filing if you're going to pay by a credit card and so it's going to be a very similar form except it's just going to be online [Music] an aspect to remember is that it can take a long time from applying for your dba or fbn to when you actually get it and you have that certificate or proof of registration it could take a month two months or longer because first you have to do the registration then you have to do the publication which is going to take at least the one two three weeks as well as some front period for when you put in the order with the newspaper then you gotta file the affidavit then you actually get the registration so you need to budget a couple months to get this done so if you need to do this to put the name on your bank account or so you can start operating as your business make sure that you plan ahead again this is attorney elizabeth weinstein if you have questions about a dba or fbn or trade name registration feel free to go ahead and ask it below and i'll try to point you in the right direction if you found this video helpful hit the thumbs up button and subscribe if you like any more tips or strategies for small business owners especially in the legal field thanks a lot for watching you