Every week, thousands of new businesses appear in public records before they have hired an accountant. Their owners are choosing a bookkeeper, a tax preparer and a payroll provider right now, often in the first few weeks. For firms that want to grow, state formation filings are one of the few prospect lists that is public, current and free. Used carelessly, they are also one of the noisiest. Here is a practical way to work them.
How big is the pool?
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics reported 534,947 business applications in September 2026, seasonally adjusted (Census Bureau, BFS, released Oct. 14, 2026). The same release projects that 29,022 of that month’s applications will become businesses with payroll within four quarters, roughly 5 percent of applications. That gap is the core lesson: most new filings will never become an employer, and many will never become a client.
What a filing contains, and what it doesn’t
A state formation record typically gives you the business name as filed, the entity type (LLC, corporation, nonprofit), a principal or mailing address, the filing date and a registered agent. Some states add an organizer or officer name. What you won’t find is a phone number, an email address, revenue, headcount or industry. Entity types and the fields published also vary from state to state, and some states publish with a lag of several weeks, so check how fresh your state’s data is before you build a routine around it. Most secretaries of state offer a search page; some also publish bulk or open-data downloads.
Why many filings are not prospects
A large share of new entities are holding companies, single-property real estate LLCs, series entities, or registrations that list only a registered agent or a PO box. In one count of 19,733 new businesses filed or permitted in five states (Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Texas) between Sept. 17 and Oct. 18, 2026, 511 looked like holding or investment shells by name and 1,163 like real estate or property-holding entities. Another 2,642, about 13 percent, could not be classified from the name alone (October 2026 five-state filings count; see Sources). Some of those holding entities will still need a tax return, but they rarely need monthly bookkeeping or payroll.
Signals that separate real prospects
Three filters do most of the work:
1. Industry. Names often reveal what a business does. Construction, restaurants, trucking and healthcare usually hire early, which means payroll, withholding and quarterly filings. In the same five-state count there were 1,405 new restaurant and bar businesses and 1,310 construction businesses. Professional-services firms (2,103 in that count) tend to need clean books and entity-level tax planning from day one.
2. Entity type. A new corporation or an LLC likely to elect S-corporation status raises questions the owner may not know to ask: reasonable compensation, payroll for owner-employees and election deadlines. Those are conversations an accountant is built for.
3. A physical business address. A street address in your service area, rather than a registered-agent office or PO box, suggests an operating business near you.
Score each filing on these three and you will usually end up with a short list worth working.
A respectful first touch
New owners are flooded with solicitations, many of them misleading “compliance” notices. Stand out by being specific and useful, not urgent. Send a short letter or note that congratulates them on the filing and offers one concrete thing for the first 90 days: a books setup checklist, a reminder of the federal and state tax registrations a new business typically needs (an EIN, state withholding and sales tax accounts where they apply), or a one-page guide to running a first payroll. Identify your firm clearly, never imply you are a government office, and follow the CAN-SPAM rules for commercial email, including a physical postal address and a working opt-out honored within 10 business days. For phone or text outreach, check TCPA and do-not-call rules first; mail and email are the safer default.
A simple weekly routine
Pick one day a week:
- Pull the past week’s filings for your county or metro area from your state’s business search or open-data portal.
- Remove holding entities, agent-only and PO-box addresses, and anything clearly outside your niche.
- Tag the rest by industry and entity type, and send your first touch to the best 10 to 25.
- Follow up once, two to three weeks later, with a second useful item rather than a repeat pitch.
Measure it like any other channel: filings reviewed, first touches sent, replies, consultations booked and engagements signed. Track the time it takes too. After eight to twelve weeks you will know which industries and entity types convert for your firm, and you can narrow the filter further.
The advantage of this approach is timing. A business that just filed hasn’t yet settled into a relationship with another firm. Reach it early, with something genuinely helpful, and you are not competing on price with an incumbent; you are the first professional who showed up.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mitchell Johnson is the founder of UncoveredList, which turns public state business filings into prospect lists for accountants, payroll firms and insurance agents.
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