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 Alameda 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 Alameda County you will need to register your DBA with the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder's Office.
To register a DBA in Alameda 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 Statement with the Alameda County Clerk. The filing fee is $40.00 for one business name and one owner. It is an additional $7.00 for a second name under the same business.
3. After the Fictitious Business Name Statement has been filed with the County Clerk, the statement must be published in an Alameda County newspaper of general circulation in the area where the business is to be conducted. The statement must be published once a week for four consecutive weeks with five days between each date of publication.
The Alameda Sun offers this service for a $100 fee (includes copy fee).
4. After publication, an affidavit of publication will need to be filed with the county clerk within 30 days after the completion of the publication cycle.
While this article strives to provide information on filing DBAs in Alameda County, we highly recommend that you speak with your business attorney for further guidance.
For more information on filing your DBA with Alameda County contact O’Neill Tran Law at info@oneilltranlaw.com.