Doing legal paperwork doesn’t often give you an Instagram moment, but this might be one. You open the envelope and excitedly look at the papers inside. Your business is now officially an LLC.

Once you decide that it’s time to transition to an LLC, you enter into paperwork land. In fact, that’s pretty much all forming an LLC is–paperwork. And depending on where you live, you’ll go through 7 steps to create an LLC.

It’s important to remember the reason you formed an LLC. To put a fence between you and your business in case anything went wrong. And in order to keep that fence strong, you’ll need to stay on top of your on-going LLC requirements.

Which sadly, means, you aren’t done with legal paperwork!

So what are the on-going LLC requirements?

Display your LLC status proudly

This one is pretty easy. You just need to let the public know that they are doing business with an LLC. After all the hard work you went through, you don’t want to keep it a secret right?

So you’ll brainstorm all the ways that people will interact with your business. And then make sure that when they have that interaction, they could find out you are an LLC. Some of the common places you’ll update:

• contracts
• business cards
• signage
• invoices
• website
• letterhead
• business phone number
• bank account

I want to take a minute to emphasize the importance of the last item: the LLC must have its own bank account.

While this might seem obvious, I see far too many creative business owners failing to treat their LLC finances separate from their own personal finances.

The reason that you set up an LLC was to put a fence between your personal and business lives. And so, you need to keep that fence strong when it comes to the financial side. Which means that you cannot:

• “borrow” money from the LLC without documenting it
• pay yourself willy-nilly
• pay personal bills from the LLC account
• pay LLC bills from your personal account

If you fail to separate your finances, then the fence will fail. So set up a separate bank account and document why the money is passing from one account to the other. (I have my LLC bank accounts at Novo. Use this link to open an account and we both get $40!)

Keep your LLC legal papers in a safe place

The process of forming and running your LLC will result in lots of paperwork. You should have a secure place where the books and records of your LLC are kept. Ideally, this safe place will not only be in the cloud but a physical copy somewhere. The rules vary state by state on what you are required to keep but in general you should have the following items:

• list of all the LLC members and managers
• copy of the certified Articles of Organization (or the LLC formation document you filed)
• copy of the signed Operating Agreement, along with any changes that have been made
• list of all the equipment and other property the LLC owns along with estimated value
• copies of the last 6 years of the LLC’s tax returns
• books of the LLC for the current year and the 4 years before that
• minutes of all of the LLC’s meetings
• written consents of all major business actions taken outside of the LLC’s meetings

If you recently formed your LLC, then you’ll add to your files each year until you’ve reached the cap. Then you can archive or shred anything older. Because you can’t keep LLC records for years it didn’t exist.

Stay on the good side of the state

Most states require that you update them on either an annual or biennial basis. Updating them also often comes with a filing fee. The common information states request include the LLC’s:

• business address
• mailing address
• owners and managers names and addresses
• agent of service of process

These requirements are usually included in the paperwork you get when you form your LLC. You’ll also often have a window of time to file this information. So I don’t forget about it, I schedule this window as a recurring event on my calendar. I like to schedule two dates: the date the window opens and the date the window closes. I also put a reminder on the date the window closes to remind me one month and two weeks before the deadline. This gives me plenty of reminders so I don’t miss the window.

How you can easily apply this today

• If you are already an LLC, then create a folder in Dropbox called “Important LLC Documents” and then as you come across or create these documents, save them in this folder.
• Debating if it is time to become an LLC? Check out this workshop and workbook designed to help you decide if it’s time to make the switch!
• Know it’s time to become an LLC but not sure what to do? Grab this workbook outlining the seven steps it takes.

If you already have an LLC, were any of these areas a surprise to you? Let me know in the comments.