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 multiple times throughout the day 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 — entity name, right to transact, SOS registration status, report year, registered agent, mailing and registered office addresses, officers, DBA name, or federal EIN. 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?

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?

Two things:

• Entities registered in the last week or so. The Comptroller publishes the dataset behind our search once a week and we import it every Sunday, so a brand-new entity can be absent for a week or more. Its own account page is live sooner: if you have the taxpayer number, add the entity to your list and it is checked directly.
• 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.

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 — more than four million of them. 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.

How do the address fields work?

The search is one form: a name-or-taxpayer-ID box with street, city, state and ZIP beneath it. Fill in whatever you know. Each field you add narrows the results, and any combination works — a street with no name, a name with only a city, a ZIP on its own. City and ZIP don't have to be exact; a neighbouring town or an adjacent ZIP is close enough to find the place.

When nothing matches, the page says so rather than quietly widening the search. It works out which one field is responsible, shows how many results you would get without it, and lets you drop that field with a click. A name you typed is never dropped for you: it is the most deliberate thing on the form, and answering a different question than the one you asked would be worse than answering none.

Does the search remember what I looked for?

Yes, in your own browser. The name box keeps the searches you ran and the records you opened for a week, and offers them back from the small arrow at its right edge, or as you type. The list is kept on your computer under your own login, not on our server, so it follows you to neither another device nor another person at the same desk.

Is the status shown in search results live?

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 one of our scheduled checks finds a change in any tracked field for an entity in your list. Changes to Right to Transact or Entity Name are alerts; everything else is a notice. You get at most two emails from a check, however many entities changed: one [ALERT] message listing every entity with an alert, and one [Notice] message for the rest. An alert arriving therefore means something on its own, and a mail rule on the subject line can route it.

Each message lays out every change as a before-and-after, with a View changes button that opens the same day on the Changes page. When many entities change the same way on one day — the same field, the same direction, on a quarter or more of what was checked — the message says at the top that it looks like a Comptroller data event rather than that many real changes. Nothing is withheld; the note is context.

Who receives it?

Every entity in your list has a lead: the person responsible for it, shown in the Lead column on the dashboard. Whoever adds an entity leads it unless a firm admin names someone else. A change goes to the entity's lead, and a copy goes to the firm's alert address if that is different. Someone who is both gets one message. An entity with no lead goes to the firm address.

Anyone can take the lead on an entity, and anyone can hand an entity they lead back to the firm address. Moving an entity between two other people, or clearing someone else's lead, takes a firm admin.

What is the Watching list?

A second list for entities you want to keep an eye on without monitoring them — a prospect, a counterparty, a former client. A watched entity is not checked on a schedule and sends no email. Instead, it is refreshed from the Comptroller whenever you open it, so what you see is current at that moment, but no history of its changes is kept. Watched entities do not count toward your plan's entity limit.

To monitor one properly — checks throughout the day, change history and email alerts — move it to Clients from its row or its detail view. If it was a client before, the history from that time comes back with it.

Where can I see past changes?

The Changes page, linked from the dashboard header. It shows the firm's changes one day at a time, with the previous and current values side by side, the VERIFY badge where it applied, and the lead for each entity. It opens on the whole firm; untick Show all firm entities to see only the entities you lead.

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

How does the free trial work?

Every new account gets 14 days of the Small plan — up to 150 monitored entities and 3 users — with no credit card. Choose a plan at any time from Settings → Plan & Billing; the days left on your trial carry over, so you are not charged until it would have ended. If the trial ends without a plan, your account is paused until you choose one.

What does it cost?

See the plans on our pricing page. Each plan has a limit on monitored entities and on users; watched entities do not count. Annual billing saves 15%. Texas sales tax is added to each invoice and shown separately.

How do I change or cancel my plan?

A firm admin can change plans from Settings → Plan & Billing. Moving up takes effect at once, and the difference for the rest of the billing period is charged then. Moving down needs your firm to fit the smaller plan first; its lower price starts with your next bill. To update your card, see invoices, or cancel, use Card, invoices & cancelling on the same page. A cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have paid for.

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.