How do I search for UCC liens on a Florida business?

You can search for UCC liens filed against a Florida business or individual through the Florida Secretary of State's FSTR (FloridaUCC.com) portal, or use SunbizStatus to run a combined entity status and UCC lien check in one place.

What is FloridaUCC.com and who uses it?

FloridaUCC.com (officially FSTR Online Filing) is the Florida Secretary of State's UCC lien search portal. It is used by lenders, banks, attorneys, CPAs, title companies, factoring companies, and M&A professionals to check whether a borrower or business has existing liens before extending credit or completing a transaction.

Can lenders check UCC liens on Florida businesses before funding?

Yes. Lenders and banks routinely search the Florida FSTR (UCC) database before extending credit to verify that collateral is not already pledged to another creditor. SunbizStatus provides a direct link to run this check alongside the entity's Sunbiz status.

Need to Change a Client's Registered Agent Mid-Year? You Don't Have to Wait for the Annual Report

If you manage Florida entities for clients, a registered agent change rarely happens on a convenient schedule. A client switches registered agent providers. A law firm decides to bring RA duties in-house for its own entities. A registered agent's office moves. A newly reinstated LLC needs a current agent back on file before anything else can happen. None of these wait for January.

The good news: they don't have to. Florida gives every entity type two ways to change a registered agent, and only one of them is tied to the annual report calendar.

Option 1: Bundle it into the annual report

Every entity's annual report form includes fields for registered agent name and registered office address, and updating them there costs nothing extra — it's included in the standard annual report fee. The catch is timing. The annual report filing window runs January 1 through May 1 each year, so this route only works during those four months, and the change doesn't take effect until the report is actually filed and processed. If a client needs the change on record today, in October, bundling it into next spring's annual report isn't an option.

Option 2: File a standalone Statement of Change — any day of the year

Every Florida entity type can also file a dedicated Statement of Change of Registered Agent/Registered Office directly with the Division of Corporations, separate from the annual report, at any point in the year. It's effective the day the Department of State files it — no waiting for a filing window.

Fees by entity type (confirmed this run via dos.fl.gov's current fee schedule):

LLC: $25 (Fla. Stat. §605.0114)
For-profit corporation: $35 (Fla. Stat. §607.0502)
Nonprofit corporation: $35 (Fla. Stat. §607.0502)
LP/LLLP: $35 (Fla. Stat. §620.1115)

What the statement has to include, per the statute text for each entity type:

The entity's exact name
The name of the current registered agent
The current registered office street address
If the agent is changing: the new agent's name
If the office address is changing: the new in-state street address
If the agent is changing, the new agent's written acceptance, included in or attached to the statement — a successor agent has to affirmatively accept the role in writing; the entity can't just name someone without that signed acceptance on file

File it through the entity-type-specific form at form.sunbiz.org, or by mail. Once the Department of State processes it, the change is live immediately — it doesn't sit and wait for anything else to happen first.

This is a different filing than a resignation

It's easy to conflate this with registered agent resignation, but they're opposite directions and triggered by different parties:

Resignation is what the agent files when the agent wants out (Fla. Stat. §607.1509 for corporations, §605.0115 for LLCs, with parallel provisions for other entity types). It starts a roughly 31-day clock, and if the entity doesn't name a replacement in time, it risks administrative dissolution.
Statement of Change is what the entity files when it wants a new agent — nothing is lapsing, nobody is resigning, the entity is simply making a change on its own initiative.

Confusing the two matters because the fix is different. A resignation puts the entity on a countdown with real consequences if missed. A Statement of Change is a routine update the entity controls entirely, with no clock attached beyond "whenever you get around to filing it."

Why this matters for a multi-client roster

For a solo business owner, this is a once-in-a-while filing. For a CPA firm, law firm, or registered agent service managing Florida entities for dozens of clients, registered agent changes happen on no predictable schedule at all — a client fires their old RA provider in March, another one's registered office moves in August, a third gets reinstated in November and needs a fresh agent designation before anything else on their account can move forward. None of that lines up with the Jan–May annual report window, and "we'll just fix it on the next annual report" can leave an entity showing a stale or unreachable agent for months.

That's the actual argument for tracking every client's entity — including who's currently listed as registered agent — in one dashboard instead of checking Sunbiz.org one client at a time. A roster view makes "did we actually get that filed for every entity that needed it" a checkable fact instead of a guess carried in someone's inbox.

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