What I Do
Every step, in the order Florida requires.
Florida LLC formation
$175Your LLC is filed with the Florida Division of Corporations. I confirm the name is available before anything is submitted. Florida keeps $125 of the price ($100 to file the Articles, $25 to record your registered agent). The remaining $50 is my service fee.
Form an LLCFlorida DBA publication
$75*Florida requires a fictitious name to be advertised once in a newspaper that qualifies under Chapter 50 in the county where you do business. I have researched which paper qualifies in all 67 counties, and I draft the notice, submit it, and pay the newspaper from the price quoted here. The signed affidavit of publication is emailed to you once the notice has run.
Order a noticeDBA publication and registration
$185†Publication is the advertising step; registration is the filing that records the name with the state. Most businesses need both, and ordering them together is a single transaction rather than two. The $50 the state charges to register the name is included in the price.
Order publication and registrationFlorida LLC annual report
$199Every Florida LLC must file an annual report between January 1 and May 1, every year, whether or not anything changed. I file yours on Sunbiz and pay the $138.75 state fee, which is inside the price, and forward you the state’s confirmation. Miss the deadline and Florida adds a mandatory $400 late fee that cannot be waived.
File my annual report*$100 in Miami-Dade and select counties, where the qualifying newspaper costs more. †$215 in those same counties. Every price here is what you pay me; where a state fee is inside it, I say how much. All prices on one page.
Who does the work
Hi, I’m Karen.
I’m a St. Petersburg founder. One Florida LLC, and six fictitious names registered beneath it — Jet & Swim, Sky & Swim, CancunToGo, Sunstate Trades, SuperReports, and The Honest Founder itself. I filed each of them, newspaper notice included, long before I placed one on anyone else’s behalf.
The sequence is the part I enjoy — which step unlocks the next, and what goes wrong when they are taken out of order. So I called the papers. Sixty-seven counties, one at a time: what they charge, which day they print, and when the affidavit comes back. That research is the service.
You’ve done the hard part already. You picked a name, built something under it, and decided it was worth making official. The notice is the next step. I’ll take that one, so you can get back to business.
Get it done
Where are you starting?
A fictitious name can belong to you personally, as a sole proprietor, or to a company: an LLC, a corporation or a partnership. If it will belong to a company that doesn’t exist yet, form the company first, because the newspaper notice has to name the owner. If the name is yours personally, or your company is already filed, the newspaper notice is your first step.