Tom Barnes A.
More trust-forward, addresses the “is this legit” question directly
Third year using them. That’s the whole review right there if you’re in a hurry. But let me give you the longer version because I think it’s worth it for anyone in the trades who’s skeptical about handing this stuff off to a company they found online. I run a construction crew in Georgia. Eighty guys. We stay busy. When I’m not on a job site I’m pricing the next one, dealing with subs, or handling something that broke. State compliance filings are not something I have mental bandwidth for, and the one time I tried to handle it myself I spent two hours on the Oregon Secretary of State website ( as we got a state contract in Oregon and had to register as a foreign LLC) and still wasn’t sure I’d done it right. That was before I found Next Step Filings. The first year I used them I was cautious. I paid, watched everything closely, and waited to see if something would go wrong. Nothing went wrong. They sent me a short form asking for the details they needed. I filled it out in about five minutes. They filed it. I got a confirmation back with the state document attached. Clean, simple, done. Second year I was less cautious and more curious. I asked them a question about whether my filing deadline had shifted because I’d updated my registered agent address. They answered same day. Not a canned response. An actual answer that addressed my specific situation. That told me there were real people on the other end of this thing, not just an automated system that takes your money and generates a PDF. Third year, this past cycle, I didn’t even think about it. The reminder came, I paid, they filed, confirmation landed in my inbox. Never had a rejection. Never had a late fee. Never had a state notice arrive saying something was missed. My foreign LLC status has been clean every single time I’ve checked it. Here’s what I’d tell another contractor considering this: the service fee is not the point. The point is that my business entity stays active, my filing record is clean, and I have documentation every time someone asks for it. I’ve had a bank, a bonding company, and a general contractor all ask me to verify my business status in the last two years. Every time I had what they needed because Next Step Filings keeps the record clean and sends me the confirmation documents. That alone has been worth it on three separate occasions. I don’t write reviews often. I’m writing this one because I’ve sent two other guys from my network to Next Step Filings and I wanted something out there that reflects what three years of using them actually looks like. It looks like nothing going wrong. For a business owner, that’s the whole job.