Pennsylvania (US)

This guide is outdated and will be removed on 1 November 2026. The up-to-date Pennsylvania (US) reference is on the Pennsylvania (US) country page.

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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
Statutory Filings
Data Availability

Data Sources

Pennsylvania is sourced from 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, prefill). 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 prefill checks, company search, and as the officer baseline in verification mode.
Business Filing Services portal (live, verification). The interactive register at file.dos.pa.gov. Returns the current status, the principal-office address, and the annual report due date, and is the source of the printable Trade Register Extract.

Mode-based routing. Prefill requests (mode: "prefill") are served from the open-data snapshot. Verification requests (mode: "verification") read the Business Filing Services portal live and merge it with the snapshot officer list; live values take precedence on conflicts.

Decennial-to-annual transition. Pennsylvania repealed the decennial report regime and introduced annual reports on 2025-01-06 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. Shorter numeric inputs (e.g. 4272272) are left-padded to ten digits (0004272272), and responses always return the padded form. 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
`filingNumber`	10 digits, zero-padded	`0004272272`	All entities

Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)

GLEIF is the supplementary data source for this identifier. company.identifiers.lei is returned when a company identifier has a unique match against this jurisdiction’s registration or validation references in GLEIF. An LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) has 20 uppercase letters and digits, ending in two check digits. Coverage varies by entity. The field is omitted when no unambiguous match is available. Lapsed or retired LEIs may be returned; annulled records are excluded.

Search Capabilities

Search Type	Pattern	Example	Match Type	Expected Results
By Name	2-200 chars	`"Sheetz"`	Starts-with (case-insensitive)	Multiple results
By PA Filing Number	1-10 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.

Active companies only

Search can return companies that are no longer active, but their status is not known at search time, so activeOnly=true has no effect. Check company.status on the company profile. Search results come from a register snapshot that does not carry company status, so companies that are no longer active can appear. Check the status on the company profile.

Quirks & Gotchas

Quirk	Details
Zero-padding is load-bearing	Filing numbers are always 10 digits with leading zeros preserved. Shorter numeric inputs are left-padded to 10 digits, so `4272272` resolves to `0004272272`. Responses always carry the padded form.
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. Use verification mode for the live status.
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 annual filing cycle ran in 2025; 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	Limited Liability Company	`9C19`
Foreign Limited Liability Company	Limited Liability Company
Domestic Business Corporation	Corporation	`3JTE`
Foreign Business Corporation	Corporation
Domestic Nonprofit Corporation	Nonprofit Organization
Foreign Nonprofit Corporation	Nonprofit Organization
Domestic Limited Partnership (LP/LLLP)	Partnership	`HSEV`
Foreign Limited Partnership	Partnership
Domestic General Partnership (GP/LLP)	Partnership
Foreign Limited Liability General Partnership	Partnership
Domestic Business Trust	Trust
Foreign Business Trust	Trust
Domestic Professional Association	Corporation
Foreign Professional Association	Corporation
Authority	Other	`RPED`
Domestic Credit Union	Cooperative	`HV9Q`
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	Vice President
Secretary	Secretary
Treasurer	Treasurer
Governor	Director	LLC governor under 15 Pa.C.S. § 8847
Organizer	AI-inferred	LLC / corporation organizer
Member	AI-inferred	LLC member (member-managed LLCs)
Managing Member	AI-inferred	LLC managing-member variant
General Partner	General Partner	Limited partnerships
Incorporator	AI-inferred

Governors, Organizers, Members, and General Partners are classified as Legal Representatives. The Registered Agent only receives service of process, has no statutory authority to bind the entity, and is not returned as a person.

Statutory Filings

Pennsylvania entities file an annual report confirming the entity’s particulars are current. The register publishes the annual report due date on the Business Filing Services record, returned on the cross-country statutoryFilings field as next.dueDate.

{
  "statutoryFilings": {
    "annualFiling": {
      "cadence": "annual",
      "next": { "dueDate": "2026-06-30" },
      "source": "pa_dos"
    }
  }
}

US states publish no statutory accounts, so the accounts obligation is absent rather than returned empty. An empty object would read as “we looked and found nothing”, which is a different claim. Placeholder cells such as N/A or Inactive, Not Applicable are dropped rather than parsed as dates, so an entity with no obligation simply has no statutoryFilings.

Data Availability

Data Point	Available	Notes
Company name	Yes	Current legal name
Company status	Yes	Verification mode only, read live from the Business Filing Services portal: Active, Out of Existence, Merged, Cancelled, Dissolved, Withdrawn, Consolidated, Terminated. 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	Yes	Trade Register Extract (printable copy of the Business Filing Services entity page), included with the company data block. The Subsistence Certificate and certified copies are not yet offered.
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 GET "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 GET "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", "otherKeyPersons"], "mode": "prefill"}'

{
  "company": {
    "id": "0002911132",
    "countryCode": "US-PA",
    "identifiers": { "filingNumber": "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": []
}

Named formation, ownership and other non-representative appointments are returned in otherKeyPersons with their filed titles. The live Business Filing Services record may include historical formation parties absent from the weekly snapshot. Known titles use the published catalogue; the statewide free-text vocabulary has no exhaustive published list. A title alone does not establish company-specific signing powers.

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Pennsylvania coverage, pricing, and sources

Table of Contents

Data Sources

Company Identifiers

Query Identifiers

Identifiers in API Response

Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)

Search Capabilities

Active companies only

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Legal Forms

Officer Roles

Statutory Filings

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

​Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)

​Search Capabilities

​Active companies only

​Quirks & Gotchas

​Mappings

​Legal Forms

​Officer Roles

​Statutory Filings

​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

Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)

Search Capabilities

Active companies only

Quirks & Gotchas

Mappings

Legal Forms

Officer Roles

Statutory Filings

Data Availability

Example API Responses

Search by Name

Search by Filing Number

Company Profile