Help & FAQ
The basics
Getting started
Three steps: add the entities you want to watch (individually or by import), confirm
alerts@goodstandingtx.com is on your safe-senders list, and then leave it alone — we
check each weekday and email you only when something changes. If anything on the way is unclear,
that's a gap in our explaining, not your understanding: write to
support@goodstandingtx.com and tell us where you
got stuck.
What does GoodStandingTX actually do?
It watches the Texas Comptroller's records for the entities you care about and emails you when something changes — right to transact, SOS registration status, report year, registered agent, addresses, or officers. Instead of looking each one up by hand, you add them once and hear about it when something moves.
Where does the information come from?
Entirely from public records published by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Two sources, both from the Comptroller: a live account lookup used for entities you monitor, and a periodically refreshed index of franchise taxpayers, which powers search. We don't add to it, and we don't get anything from your files.
What do the status labels mean?
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Active | Right to transact business in Texas is active. |
| Forfeited | The right to transact has been forfeited, typically for unfiled reports or unpaid tax. The entity still has franchise tax responsibility and can generally be reinstated. |
| Not Established | Franchise tax responsibility exists but the right to transact was never established. |
| Ended | Franchise tax responsibility has ended. The date is the State's, and where it recorded a reason we show that too. See the next section. |
| Off rolls | The entity left the Comptroller's franchise tax rolls while we were watching, but the State has not published an end date for it. |
What the search covers — and what it doesn't
What's included?
Every entity the Texas Comptroller currently lists as an active franchise taxpayer — more than three million — regardless of standing.
Poor standing does not remove an entity from the search. Forfeited entities, entities that never established a right to transact, and entities inactive or terminated with the Secretary of State are all included and searchable. A large number of listed entities are inactive with both the Comptroller and the SOS. An entity that needs a Certificate of Account Status before the SOS will reinstate it is exactly this case, and it will be found.
What isn't included?
Three things:
- Entities registered in the last few days. Our search index is refreshed regularly, so a brand-new entity appears after the next refresh.
- Entities never subject to Texas franchise tax. Sole proprietorships and general partnerships owned directly by individuals aren't franchise taxpayers, so they have never appeared in the search index at all.
- Entities the Comptroller removed before we began tracking. Once the Comptroller drops an entity it stops appearing in the data we index, so our search won't return it. The Comptroller's own Account Status search still finds these entities — by name or by taxpayer number — so you can look one up directly on their site.
We have no knowledge of or control over what the Comptroller removes, or why. The rolls are theirs and the criteria for inclusion are theirs. What we can tell you is that in practice, entities we see drop off are ones their own lookup reports as having ended franchise tax responsibility.
Former entities are searched by default, alongside current ones. This covers the Comptroller's full Open Records export of ended entities, reaching back to 1919, as well as the ones we watched drop off. Where the State recorded a reason, we show it: dissolved in home state, merged out of existence, forfeited, no nexus.
Current entities always sort first. If ended ones are in your way, tick only entities currently on the franchise tax rolls to leave them out.
These records are history, not monitoring. Their details are frozen at the point the responsibility ended, they are marked Ended with that date, and they are never checked for changes — there is nothing left to change.
Is the status shown in search results live?
| Where | Source |
|---|---|
| Entities in your client list | Live. Checked against the Comptroller each weekday, and on demand with Check Now. |
| Status ↗ on a search result | Live. Queried from the Comptroller when you click it, and includes registered agent and officers, which the search index doesn't carry. |
| The status pill in the results list | From our search index, refreshed regularly. |
For a quick scan the results list is fine. To be certain of an entity's standing at this moment, click Status, or add it to your client list where it's checked live.
Does the search cover Secretary of State records?
No. It covers the Comptroller's franchise tax records. SOS registration status is shown because the Comptroller reports it, but the SOS maintains its own registry that includes entities never subject to franchise tax, and that registry has no public search interface we can use. For SOS-specific questions, use SOSDirect.
Alerts and monitoring
When do I get an email?
When our weekday check finds a change in any tracked field for an entity in your list. Changes to Right to Transact are flagged as alerts; everything else is a notice. If several entities change on the same day you get one email per entity.
How far back does the history go?
To the day you added the entity, not before. We record what the Comptroller reports each time we check, so an entity's change history starts when you enroll it — we can't tell you what its status was last year, or when it changed, because the Comptroller publishes only the current state.
It may help to think of it the way you'd think about a backup program: it protects you from the day you install it forward, and it can't recover something lost before you started running it. The sooner an entity is in your list, the longer the record you'll have of it.
What does the VERIFY badge on an alert mean?
It means the change looks like it might be an artifact of the Comptroller's processing rather than a real change. We flag it when a value disappears entirely, when an officer list drops sharply, or when officer records come entirely from SOS rather than a filed PIR.
We've watched these values go blank and come back a day later. Check against the filed report before acting on a flagged change.
Can I miss an alert?
Yes, and it's worth knowing how. We can only report a change once the Comptroller's systems
reflect it, so state processing delays become our delays. Email can also be filtered or delayed.
Add alerts@goodstandingtx.com to your safe senders, and treat this as a monitoring
aid rather than your only control.
Why the numbers sometimes disagree
The address in search doesn't match the address in the detail view.
They're different fields. Search shows a taxpayer address carried in our search index, which appears to originate from the entity's own filings. The detail view shows the mailing address and registered office address from the live lookup, which are separate records on the account — and we have seen entities where the two systems carry different addresses at the same time.
Mailing and registered office differ for most entities — the registered office is usually an attorney, accountant, or commercial registered agent, so that's expected rather than an error.
A field hasn't changed in months — are you still checking?
Yes. We record a dated snapshot every time we check an entity, whether or not anything moved, and the Last Checked column on your dashboard shows the most recent one. A value changes in our records only when it changes in the Comptroller's records — we don't estimate, interpret, or age anything on our own.
So a report year that still reads last year, or an SOS status date from several years ago, is what the Comptroller reports right now, not a stale copy on our side. Records also move on the agencies' schedule rather than yours: we have seen a report filed in March not appear in the Comptroller's records until August. If a filing you made isn't reflected yet, that's the state's timeline — and we'll show it the day it changes.
The Comptroller's website shows something different than you do.
For entities you monitor we show what the Comptroller's live lookup returns, so this should be rare. But the Comptroller maintains more than one public source for this information, and those sources don't always carry the same fields, or the same values, for an entity at a given moment.
When it matters, the Comptroller is authoritative — not us. If something they show you can't be reconciled with what we show, raise it with the Comptroller directly.
Your data and confidentiality
Can you see my client list?
Firms are isolated from each other. No customer can see another customer's data.
- The admin console shows firm names, user counts, and entity counts. It never displays client names or entity identifiers — no screen in it lists them.
- Our Terms of Service make it contractually binding that we won't sell your data, won't market to the entities you monitor, won't use your list to compete with you, and won't train models on it.
To be straight with you about the limit of that: any service that monitors data on your behalf must be able to read what it's monitoring, so the platform administrator does have database access. We'd rather say that plainly than claim a technical impossibility that isn't true.
What do you actually store about my clients?
The entity name and 11-digit taxpayer number, any notes or groups you add, and the public-record values retrieved over time. We don't want and never ask for returns, financial statements, or SSNs. Everything we display about an entity is public record.
Do I need client consent to use this?
That's your call as the practitioner, not ours. You're best placed to judge what your professional, regulatory, and engagement obligations require before using a third-party service provider, and we don't advise on it.
What we can tell you is what we commit to, so you can weigh it: the confidentiality obligations in Section 7 of the Terms are binding, they survive termination, and they exist specifically so firms with confidentiality duties can engage us as a service provider.
What happens to my data if I cancel?
It's kept for 90 days so it can be restored if you come back, then permanently deleted. You can request earlier deletion at any time by writing to privacy@goodstandingtx.com.
Account and billing
Why do I need an invite code?
GoodStandingTX is invitation-only during beta so we can keep the group small enough to respond to properly. If you don't have a code you can request access.
What does it cost?
Nothing during beta. If we introduce pricing you'll get at least 30 days' notice by email before any charge, with the option to cancel first.
Something's wrong, or I have a question you haven't answered.
Email support@goodstandingtx.com. If you're reporting a data problem, include the taxpayer number — it makes it much faster to trace.