I submitted my business license application through the state portal about 5 weeks ago. I got the confirmation email that same day. But the status still says "under review" and hasn't changed once. I called the office twice and both times they just said to keep waiting. Is this normal? I'm getting nervous because I can't start operating until it's approved.
Licensing
The state website still shows my application as under review
Five weeks jsn't that long for our state. What line of business? Some license types get batched differently.
I had the same thing happen last year. The portal never updated, but I got the actual certificate in the mail before the website changed. The website lagged for weeks. Might be worth checking your mail carefully.
It's a small retail shop. Nothing complicated, I thought. I've been checking the mail but nothing yet.
The portal is useless. I've been told by two different people at the office that the status page updates "manually." Whatever that means.
Did you apply online or send paper forms? Online submissions sometimes sit in a queue longer because they aren't entered by hand right away.
Online. Everything was electronic. i attached all the documents they asked for, and I paid the fee right away.
Call again and ask specifically for a "status check" and a case number. The first time I called they wouldn't give me anything until I asked for a number to reference. Once I had a case number, things moved faster.
This is probably not helpful but I've heard the review process can take 4-8 weeks depending on the county. If you're in a county with a backlog it's worse right now.
No, it's not just you. I applied in March and it took almost Nine weeks. The website said under review the whole time. Then one day it just flipped to approved with no warning. Keep your documents in order and stay patient.
Nine weeks is ridiculous. Should we be contacting someone higher up? Is there an ombudsman for this?
There's usually a small business office within the state that can help push things along. i don't know if that's treu everywhere, but it's worth a call if you're past the stated processing time. Check the website for a "processing times" page before you do though, so you know what their own number is.
The processing time page on my state's site said 30 days but the fine print said "business days." So it was longer than I thought. Might be the same for you.
i'll double check the fine print. Thanks. I didn't think about business days versus calendar days.
Call again and ask politely if there's anything missing from your file. Sometimes they flag something and it sits there without notifying you. That happened to me. A document i uploaded didn't save properly and no one told me until I asked.
That's a good point about the upload. If the portal saves files weirdly, it could have gone through without the attachment. I'd verify the uploaded files are actually in the file.