Congratulations, you’ve decided to take the next step towards your financial freedom by starting your own business and forming your LLC in Indiana. It’s a big step, but you can do it! But before you can open your doors, you need a great name that complies with the state’s guidelines and requirements. You also need to make sure it’s available to use, and for that you need to run a state business search.

In this post, we’ll walk you through this entire process and go over everything you need to know.

Why Do You Need to Do a Business Entity Search When Starting an LLC?

Everyone deserves to know who they are giving their money to. To protect customers, as well as business owners, Indiana requires every business to have a unique name. Before spending too long coming up with a name you love, it is a good idea to learn the Indiana business naming guidelines.

Indiana Naming Guidelines

Unfortunately, you can’t call your limited liability company anything you want. There are specific requirements and restrictions for LLCs in the State of Indiana that are set out in the IN Code § 23-0.5-3-1 (2023), and you must adhere to them. Luckily, there aren’t too many business naming guidelines, and most of them are obvious:

• Distinctive. The name needs to be unique. It cannot be the same as any business that is currently operating in the State of Indiana or any business that has been dissolved for less than 120 days.
• Specific Inclusions. For an LLC, the name must include either “Limited Liability Company” or an acceptable abbreviation. The accepted abbreviations are L.L.C. or LLC.
• Prohibited words/phrases. A business name may not include any language that may confuse a customer into thinking the business is associated with the State of Indiana, another state, the United States, or any government agency or financial institution. For example, you can call yourself “The United States Car Company, LLC.”

See, simple stuff. But to ensure your name is not already taken by another business in Indiana, you’ll need to conduct a business name search.

Conducting a Business Name Search in Indiana – Step-by-Step Guide With Tips

You can perform a business name search free of charge by using the INBiz portal on the Indiana Secretary of State website. The first time you see the page, it looks intimidating, but to check if your name is unique, you won’t need to worry about any of the advanced search options.

When you click on the link to Indiana’s INBiz portal, you’ll see this:

Select the “Exact Match” radio button and type the name you want to use into the Business Name search box. Then click on the box next to the “I’m not a robot” reCAPTCHA to click on the tiles from an image based on the prompt. Finally, you can scroll down and click on the orange “Search” button.

You will either see an Alert box that will tell you “No data found.” or a table with the name of the business you searched for, along with a lot of other information about the business. If you see the Alert box, congratulations, the name is available, but if the table pops up instead, you’re out of luck.

You may notice under the header “Name Type,” most of the businesses are listed as “LEGAL NAME,” but there is another type, “ASSUMED BUSINESS NAME.” This is the same as “Doing Business As.” If you plan to operate your business under a different name than the name of your registered business, such as a website, you will need to file a Certificate of Assumed Business Name or Doing-Business-As (DBA) form and pay the fee of $30 by mail or in person, or $20 online.

If you want to learn more about an individual business, you can click on the Business ID number in the first column. You will see a complete profile of the business.

What Can You Do Once You Have an Available Name?

So, the name you want to use for your business is available. Great, but there are a few more things you may want to consider, like reserving the name, trademarking the name, and registering a domain based on the name.

Reserve a name.

Just because the name you want is available today doesn’t guarantee that by the time you finish and submit your paperwork to create your LLC, the name will still be available. But there’s a way to protect the name until you have time to start your business.

You can reserve an available business name for 120 days on the Access Indiana website, but you’ll need to create an account. The initial 120-day reservation costs $10, and renewing the reservation for another 120 days is $10.

Trademark or service-mark a name.

Trademarks and service-marks can be confusing. Trademarks protect a product, while service-marks do the same thing for a service. To apply for either mark, the name must currently be known and used in commerce.

You can apply for a mark either through the USPTO website or the Indiana Secretary of State. Using the USPTO website provides protection nationally while registering the mark with the Indiana website only protects the mark within Indiana.

Registering a mark nationally with the USPTO will cost $350 but only $10 if you choose to protect your mark only in Indiana.

Register a domain name.

Most customers find new businesses online, so it is a good idea to have a strong online presence. That means you will want to have a business website.

There are lots of domain registrars, but one of the most popular is GoDaddy. Type the domain name you want to use into the Domain Search tool at the top of the GoDaddy site. Preferably, it should be the same as your business name. Remember to add an extension–.com is the most common.

If the domain name is available, you can register it by paying the registration fee. If it isn’t available, try an alternative.

To further protect your brand, you may want to reserve your name on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and Pinterest.

Conclusion

Naming your new business is just the first step. Now, you have to file the paperwork to make your LLC legal in Indiana. Tailor Brands can help. They are experts at getting new businesses off on the right foot, and since they offer no additional cost options, nothing is keeping you from getting professional assistance.

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