Pennsylvania (US)

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This guide contains public integration notes for Pennsylvania. Use it for identifier formats, search behavior, and country-specific caveats. The live source of truth for coverage, pricing, data sources, documents, legal forms, roles, and status values is the pricing page.

Pennsylvania coverage, pricing, and sources

Open the current catalog for supported datapoints, documents, sources, identifiers, and availability.

This jurisdiction may be in preview or limited availability. Check the live pricing page or contact support before relying on it in production.

Country details below are preserved as integration notes. If a table or example conflicts with the live pricing page, use the pricing page as the source of truth and contact support.

Data Sources
Company Identifiers
Search Capabilities
Quirks & Gotchas
Mappings
- Legal Forms
- Officer Roles
Data Availability

API access: US-PA is not yet part of the public countryCode enum. Contact us to enable it on your workspace. Requests sent with countryCode: "US-PA" will otherwise return 400 until the enum is expanded.

Data Sources

Pennsylvania uses a single integration against the Pennsylvania Department of State, Bureau of Corporations and Charitable Organizations (BCCO). The register covers every entity filed under Title 15 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes (business corporations, nonprofit corporations, limited liability companies, limited partnerships, general partnerships including LLPs, business trusts, professional associations) and four non-Title-15 forms maintained alongside them (credit unions under 17 Pa.C.S., financial institutions under 7 Pa.C.S., municipal authorities under 53 Pa.C.S., and land banks under 68 Pa.C.S.).

Department of State Open Data snapshot (fast, primary). A weekly refresh of the BCCO database published at data.pa.gov under “Registered Businesses in PA Current by County Department of State”. Covers 2.3M distinct filing numbers and the associated governor and officer roster (3.9M rows). Used for onboarding checks, company search, and the primary verification baseline.

Mode-based routing. Onboarding requests (mode: "onboarding") and verification requests (mode: "verification") are both served from the open-data snapshot in v1. A live connection to the Business Filing Services portal (file.dos.pa.gov) is on the roadmap to provide up-to-the-minute status reads and the printable Trade Register Extract.

Decennial-to-annual transition. Pennsylvania repealed the decennial report regime and introduced annual reports on 2026-01-06 under Act 122 of 2022. Officer data refreshes as each entity files its first post-2025 annual report. Entities that have not yet filed a post-2025 annual report may carry officer data up to ten years old from their last decennial filing. Administrative dissolution for non-filers begins 2027.

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifier Type	Format	Example	Notes
PA Filing Number	10 digits, zero-padded	`0004272272`	BCCO internal file number (15 Pa.C.S. §132). Leading zeros are significant.

The PA filing number is zero-padded to exactly ten digits. Queries with the unpadded form (e.g. 4272272 instead of 0004272272) are rejected. The prefix loosely tracks registration vintage — 000xxxxxxx is pre-1970, 001xxxxxxx is the current (2020s) range — but the prefix does not encode entity type.

Identifiers in API Response

Identifier	Format	Example	Found In
`paFilingNumber`	10 digits, zero-padded	`0004272272`	All entities

Search Capabilities

Search Type	Pattern	Example	Match Type	Expected Results
By Name	2-100 chars	`"Sheetz"`	Starts-with (case-insensitive)	Multiple results
By PA Filing Number	10 digits	`0004272272`	Exact	Exact match returned first (matchType: id); other results may follow

Starts-with search. Name search anchors on the beginning of the legal name (case-insensitive). Use fuller query strings to narrow the result set, which is capped at 50 matches.

Quirks & Gotchas

Quirk	Details
Zero-padding is load-bearing	Filing numbers are always 10 digits with leading zeros preserved. Never strip them — the register and our API treat `0004272272` and `4272272` as different keys.
Status is not in the snapshot	The open-data dataset does not carry a current status field. The Commonwealth does not administratively dissolve non-filers before the Act 122 of 2022 penalties begin in 2027, so every row in the snapshot would read “active” and historic dissolutions are invisible.
No shareholder or UBO register	Pennsylvania does not publish shareholders or beneficial owners for any entity type.
No activity codes	The BCCO does not collect NAICS, NACE, or ISIC codes. Industry classification is held by the PA Department of Revenue for tax purposes and is not released publicly.
Fictitious names live separately	Fictitious name registrations under 54 Pa.C.S. § 311 are a separate filing track and are not part of the business entity dataset. DBA-style names are therefore not indexed for search.
Officer titles are free-text	The `party_type` field carries 500+ observed variants (President, Governor, Organizer, Treasurer, Secretary, Vice President, General Partner, Incorporator, Member, plus a long tail of roles such as Pastor, Fire Chief, Chief Revenue Officer). Titles are normalized by AI enrichment.
Paid documents are mailed or picked up	The Subsistence Certificate (domestic good standing), written record search, and certified copies are paid (see pricing), ordered through the BFS portal, and delivered electronically or by mail from Harrisburg. These are not yet offered through Topograph.
Annual reports are new	The decennial-report regime was repealed in 2022. Entities now file annually (for-profit corporations by June 30, LLCs by September 30, LPs/LLPs/trusts/professional associations by December 31). First filing cycle closed 2026; officer data will refresh year over year going forward.

Mappings

Legal Forms

Legal form is sourced from the typeofbusinessregistration column of the Department of State open-data dataset. The vocabulary is a closed enum of 18 values backed by Title 15 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes (plus four forms governed by 17, 7, 53, and 68 Pa.C.S.).

All 18 Pennsylvania entity types

DOS Entity Type	Standardized	ISO 20275
Domestic Limited Liability Company	LimitedLiabilityCompany	`2HBR`
Foreign Limited Liability Company	LimitedLiabilityCompany
Domestic Business Corporation	Corporation	`ECSB`
Foreign Business Corporation	Corporation
Domestic Nonprofit Corporation	NonprofitOrganization
Foreign Nonprofit Corporation	NonprofitOrganization
Domestic Limited Partnership (LP/LLLP)	Partnership	`LPNL`
Foreign Limited Partnership	Partnership
Domestic General Partnership (GP/LLP)	Partnership	`LLP`
Foreign Limited Liability General Partnership	Partnership
Domestic Business Trust	Trust	`XTIQ`
Foreign Business Trust	Trust
Domestic Professional Association	Corporation
Foreign Professional Association	Corporation
Authority	Other	`XJHM`
Domestic Credit Union	CreditUnion	`CUSO`
Domestic Financial Institution	Other
Domestic Land Bank	Other

Officer Roles

The party_type field on the dataset is free-text with over 500 casing and punctuation variants. Topograph routes each raw value through AI role enrichment, producing a standardized role label, English translation, and (when available) an ISO 5009 Official Organizational Role code.

Common Raw Value	Standardized	Notes
President	President	15 Pa.C.S. § 1732 statutory corporation officer
Vice President	VicePresident
Secretary	Secretary
Treasurer	Treasurer
Governor	Director	LLC governor under 15 Pa.C.S. § 8847
Organizer	Incorporator	LLC / corporation organizer
Member	Member	LLC member (member-managed LLCs)
Managing Member	Member	LLC managing-member variant
General Partner	GeneralPartner	Limited partnerships
Incorporator	Incorporator

Governors, Organizers, Members, and General Partners are classified as Legal Representatives. Registered Agent is an Other Key Person — it only receives service of process and has no statutory authority to bind the entity.

Data Availability

Data Point	Available	Notes
Company name	Yes	Current legal name
Company status	Roadmap	Read from the live Business Filing Services portal in a future release. The open-data snapshot does not carry a status field.
Registration date	Yes	BCCO initial filing date
Legal address	Yes	Street address, city, state, ZIP, county (67 Pennsylvania counties)
Legal form	Yes	Closed 18-value Title 15 vocabulary with ISO 20275 mapping where GLEIF publishes one
Legal representatives	Yes	Officers and governors with free-text titles, normalized by AI enrichment
Registered agent	Roadmap	Surfaced on the BFS portal detail page — not in the open-data snapshot
Activity codes	No	Not collected by the BCCO
Shareholders	No	Not published
UBOs	No	Not published (federal CTA / FinCEN is a separate system)
Documents	Roadmap	The printable Trade Register Extract and the Subsistence Certificate will ship alongside the live portal integration
Financial data	No	Not collected
Fictitious names (DBAs)	No	Registered separately under 54 Pa.C.S. § 311, not part of the business entity dataset

Example API Responses

Search by Name

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/search?country=US-PA&query=Sheetz" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

[
  {
    "id": "0002911132",
    "legalName": "SHEETZ AVIATION, INC.",
    "countryCode": "US-PA",
    "matchReason": {
      "matchType": "default"
    },
    "address": {
      "region": "PA",
      "countryCode": "US"
    }
  }
]

Search by Filing Number

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/search?country=US-PA&query=0002911132" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

[
  {
    "id": "0002911132",
    "legalName": "SHEETZ AVIATION, INC.",
    "countryCode": "US-PA",
    "matchReason": {
      "matchType": "id"
    }
  }
]

Company Profile

curl -X POST "https://api.topograph.co/v2/company" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"countryCode": "US-PA", "id": "0002911132", "dataPoints": ["company", "legalRepresentatives"], "mode": "onboarding"}'

{
  "company": {
    "id": "0002911132",
    "countryCode": "US-PA",
    "identifiers": { "paFilingNumber": "0002911132" },
    "legalName": "SHEETZ AVIATION, INC.",
    "registrationDate": "1999-05-20",
    "legalForm": {
      "localName": "Foreign Business Corporation",
      "standardized": "Corporation"
    },
    "legalAddress": {
      "city": "Harrisburg",
      "region": "PA",
      "postalCode": "17101",
      "countryCode": "US"
    }
  },
  "legalRepresentatives": []
}

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Pennsylvania coverage, pricing, and sources

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifiers in API Response

Search Capabilities

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Legal Forms

Officer Roles

Data Availability

Example API Responses

Search by Name

Search by Filing Number

Company Profile

​Start here

Pennsylvania coverage, pricing, and sources

​Table of Contents

​Data Sources

​Company Identifiers

​Query Identifiers

​Identifiers in API Response

​Search Capabilities

​Quirks & Gotchas

​Mappings

​Legal Forms

​Officer Roles

​Data Availability

​Example API Responses

​Search by Name

​Search by Filing Number

​Company Profile

Start here

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifiers in API Response

Search Capabilities

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Legal Forms

Officer Roles

Data Availability

Example API Responses

Search by Name

Search by Filing Number

Company Profile