Frequently Asked Questions



Data Download Reports

  •  Does this reporting tool return me back copies of the actual documents filed?
  •  What do I get in this report?
  •  How do I receive the data reports?
  •  How do I find out what a particular data column contains or what it means?
  •  How do I get more help along the way?
  •  Why is my data partitioned into multiple files instead of one file?
  •  How do I associate an officer record with a business entity record (or RA to corporation, action to corporation, voter history to voter, etc.)?
  •  How can I view the data where these officer names & corporation names (or UCC liens & UCC entities, voter history & voter, etc.) are joined together on the same line?
  •  I received an email for my report but the attachment was blocked by my email provider.  How do I get my file?
  •  What exactly do I get with a data download monthly subscription?
  •  How much is a data report?
  •  How can I pay for a data report?
  •  I can't assign my Secretary of State trust account to my web account.  The page tells me my information in my web profile does not match up the trust account information.  I know this is the right account number but I don’t know what address information was used when the account was set up.  How do I make this assignment?
  •  How do I get back all entities under my Registered Agency when my agency is in the system multiple times with minor variations in the name?
 
 

Answers

  • Does this reporting tool return me back copies of the actual documents filed?
 No, it does not.  This tool does NOT return any actual documents or copies of documents from the UCC or Commercial Recordings systems; just the data that was recorded from those documents.  If you wish to request document copies you would contact customer service at 775-684-5708.
 
  • What do I get in this report?
The content of the report results returned to you are fully customizable.  You can choose to receive Corporations (Business Entities) or UCC (liens) data.  When you create your data report you will be able to specify which data fields you want returned in the result set, search criteria to help filter your data, and the file format of your report.  Your results can be put into a fixed width text file or a comma delimited text file.  When you actually run your report you will be able to fully review all your settings on the report preview page.  There you will see a "View Selected File Structure" button where you would be provided with enough information and file specifics to build a software interface to process the files if needed.
 
  • How do I receive the data reports?
Because a large data report can potentially take anywhere from 1 to 50 minutes to generate depending on it’s size, the reports are not immediately available to you right after you run the report.  Instead the report is transferred to you sometime afterwards utilizing your email address as notification channel.  You will have one of three options to actually receive your report: 1) Emailed as an attachment, 2) Downloaded over the internet via a link provided in an email, or 3) An FTP (File Transfer Protocol) transfer to your FTP server.  "Email it to me" provides the most simple and fastest access to your report results but your email provider may block a report due to a large size or if it's compressed into a self extracting zip file.  "FTP it to me" is most desirable for programmatic interfacing of the results but you will need to have a reliable FTP Server up and running at all times to accept incoming transactions.  "Email me a link to the file" is the recommended transfer method as report size and compression type will not adversely impact the transfer.  You just need to have a valid email address and an internet connection to download the report through.
 
  • How do I find out what a particular data column contains or what it means?
If it is a blue underlined hyper-link you can click the column name and a help definition will pop-up describing the column.  This help pop-up can be found on many other items as well such as report file types and personal settings.
 
  • How do I get more help along the way?
Just about every word that is a blue underlined hyper-link will bring up a pop-up definition when clicked.  You will see report result fields, search criteria fields, report file types and many other items in this format, all clickable, to assist you in understanding the meaning or functionality behind the item.
 
  • Why is my data partitioned into multiple files instead of one file?
This is what is referred to as a normalized relational structure in the database world.  Data items such as business entities and officers have a direct relation to one another.  There can be any number of officers to one business entity.  Because of this many to one relationship, the officers data is stored in a different data table (or file) than the business entities.  Then we relate officer records to a business entity record by a common key data column, in this case the CorporationID.  See the next question for how to associate these two different kinds of records to one another using this key.  By separating officers and entities into separate records we can eliminate the redundancy and added size associated with putting the business entity data on each officer record or eliminate the complexity of allocating an undeterminable amount of officers on the one business entity record.  This same many-to-one relationship is true of voter history records to voter records, UCC actions to UCC liens or Corporation Stocks to Corporations, to name a few.
 
  • How do I associate an officer record with a business entity record (or RA to corporation, action to corporation, voter history to voter, etc.)?
Related records will have a common identifier column to tie them together.  In the case of officers and business entities (corporations) the identifier is the CorporationID column.  Both files will have this column and a value in the officers file will match to a value in the corporations file.  Thus if the CorporationID for Corporation "XYZ" is "2345" then all officers in the officers file will have CorporationID "2345".
 
  • How can I view the data where these officer names & corporation names (or UCC liens & UCC entities, voter history & voter, etc.) are joined together on the same line?
If you import your report results to a relational database program like Microsoft Access, SQL Server, Oracle, etc., it is possible with build custom queries in that format so that you can view customized result sets.  Refer to the Access help documentation on how to use the query building wizard for more information.  For example, to join officers and business entities within Access you could create an Access query similar to this:

Select CorporationName, CorporationType, FirstName, LastName, OfficerType
From Corporations C,
CorporationOfficers CO
Where CO.CorporationID = C.CorporationID

Or to join voter records to voter history records you could build a query similar to this:

Select FirstName, LastName, Address1, ElectionDate, VoteCode
From EligibleVoters V,
VoterHistory VH
Where VH.VoterID = V.VoterID

Please note, the Secretary of State’s office is not responsible for supporting Microsoft Access nor providing Access training.  These queries are provided for informational purposes only and may produce errors if the selected columns were not specified in your report template.   These queries are provided as is, with no warranty or guarantee of success.

 
  • I received an email for my report but the attachment was blocked by my email provider.  How do I get my file?
Whenever you run a report, you should always receive two emails.  The first one will contain the actual report as an attachment (or as a downloadable link depending on your report transfer settings you specified in your profile) and another order summary email.  This second email, regardless of your file transfer preference, will include a hyper-link where you can download your report file from the internet.  This link is only active for the first 7 days after you run your report.  After you have downloaded the report, update your file transfer settings to "Email me a link to the file" in the "How would you like to receive your report file?" field on the Report Transfer Settings tab in your personal profile.  Most email providers nowadays will just block any attachments with an "exe" extension because most viruses are packaged as exe files.  It’s also possible the attachment was blocked because the file size was too large.
 
  • What exactly do I get with a data download monthly subscription?
For a flat fee of $500 a month you can run as many data reports against any available data sources (Corporations, UCC, etc.) as you wish, with no limitations.  When you run a report with a subscription the order checkout process where you enter your payment is completely skipped and your report is ran immediately.  You will also have the ability with a subscription to configure your reports to run automatically on their own, at any time interval of your choosing, without having to login to your account and manually run the reports.  You can configure a report to run daily, X times a week on any specified days of the week, or X times a month on any specified dates of the month.  If you had an FTP server on your end to auto send the reports to, you could potentially have a fully automated system to transfer data between these two systems with no human intervention necessary.  To start a subscription you can call customer service at 775-684-5708.
 
  • How much is a data report?
The price of the report is dependent upon the size of the report.  The more records included in your report, the higher the cost, usually set to not exceed a certain value.  Different data sources can potentially have different pricing structures.  See the Fee Schedule page for the most up to date pricing schedules.  
 
  • How can I pay for a data report?
You can either pay by credit card, pin-less debit card or by a Trust Account set up with the Nevada Secretary of State's Accounting department.  This Trust Account is an account in which you may deposit funds into via cash, check, credit card, debit card, or EFT and apply any charges for services rendered by the Secretary of State to this account.  The benefits of having a trust account are simplified payment processing, spending auditing, reduced risk and potential abuse in sharing a payment method within your organization, and monthly statements/invoices summarizing your spending activity with the Secretary of State’s office.  You may set up a trust account by calling the accounting department at 775-684-5780 or accessing the mail-in form here.
 
  • I can't assign my Secretary of State trust account to my web account.  The page tells me my information in my web profile does not match up the trust account information.  I know this is the right account number but I don’t know what address information was used when the account was set up.  How do I make this assignment?
The checks built into the payment assignment module prohibit anyone from assigning their web account to a trust account if the key name and address information does not match up.  Sometimes however in larger organizations you may not know what address information was provided when the trust account was set up in which case you can call the accounting department at 775-684-5780 to web enable this trust account for the "SOS Services" web application.  You will be asked a series of questions to verify your association with the organization that set up this trust account before the assignment can be made.
 
  • How do I get back all entities under my Registered Agency when my agency is in the system multiple times with minor variations in the name?
Sometimes the Registered Agent associated with a business entity filing is recorded with minor variations in the RA name (i.e.  "NV RA Inc", "NV RA, Inc", "NV RA, Inc.") in multiple RA records.  This makes getting all business entities under this agency challenging since they could be distributed across any and all of them.  It is possible however, when specifying the Registered Agent Name searching parameter (under the Agent Contact Info grouping at the bottom of the Search Criteria tab) to place the special wildcard character "%" which represents zero or more characters.  In the case of "NV RA Inc" agency, you could simply enter "NV RA%" for your searching parameter which will ensure all agencies matching that pattern are returned in your report results.  To find out how many variations your agency name has you can use the free business entity search to do an RA name search to determine a safe place to put your "%" character.  





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