A “doing business as” (DBA) called a Fictitious Business Name in California, is a name that a business uses in practice that differs from its official registered name. For example, if you registered your business with the Secretary of State as “Katie’s Lawyer Services, LLC”, but you operate your business as “Awesome Lawyers”. “Awesome Lawyers” would be the DBA of “Katie’s Lawyer Services”.
How to register a DBA in Sonoma County
In the state of California Fictitious Business Names (DBAs) are not registered at the state level, instead they are filed with the County Clerk in the county in which the principal place of business is located. If your principal place of business is located in Sonoma County, you will need to register with Sonoma County Clerk-Recorder’s Office.
To register a DBA in Sonoma County the following steps must be completed:
1. Conduct a name search using the County Index and the Secretary of State to ensure that neither business name is already in use.
2. File a Fictitious Business Name Online or filling out the Application for Fictitious Business Name. The filing fee is $45.00 for one business name and one owner. It is an additional $9.00 for each additional business or owner name under the same business.
3. After the Fictitious Business Name Statement has been filed with the Sonoma County Clerk, the statement must be published in a Sonoma County adjudicated newspaper once per week for four consecutive weeks.
A list of Sonoma County adjudicated newspapers can be found here.
4. After publication, proof of publication will need to be filed with the Sonoma County Clerk.
While this article strives to provide information on filing DBAs in Sonoma County, we highly recommend that you speak with your business attorney for further guidance.
For more information on filing your DBA with Sonoma County contact O’Neill Tran Law at info@oneilltranlaw.com.