How Ollie eliminated late fees and automated their state filings

Ollie needed a better handle on where they were registered, especially with plans to go nationwide.

• Encountered issues with late franchise tax filings and even had a registration revoked
• Faced difficulty tracking where registrations were already in place
• Required nationwide registration coverage within the next year
• Ollie previously used four different registered agents—none of them were actually helpful

Since switching to Discern, Ollie has:

• Regained good standing in states where they had fallen behind
• Stayed on top of every franchise tax filing without a single miss
• Gained full visibility into their state registrations
• Easily registered in multiple new states with minimal effort
• Streamlined everything by consolidating all registered agent services under Discern
• Learned exactly what they need to do for each state and can now file through Discern in minutes

What is Ollie?

Ollie is a dog food company that specializes in fresh food for dogs, has raised over $100M and does hundreds of millions of dollars of sales each year. They offer several different types of meal plans, with food delivered directly to customers' homes.

Before Discern, they had difficulty tracking which states they were registered in, and had even seen a state registration get revoked, as well as a franchise tax payment get missed. Their Registered Agent didn't help at all.

It was also difficult to know what they needed to do next. They knew they needed to register nearly everywhere in the US, but that process required research just to understand exactly what needed to get filed. They also wanted to minimize time spent on entity management, so they could focus on serving their customers.

Switching onto Discern

After Controller Kyle Lambert discovered Discern through its resources on franchise taxes, Ollie was able to get a full audit of their existing state registrations and standing from Discern for free.

Implementation took minutes, and then Ollie had a perfect view of their existing state registrations, upcoming filings, and was able to get reinstated in states where they needed.

They were also immediately able to start registering in new states - as they needed to register virtually everywhere in the US as they have grown. The Discern product's simple user interface made a complex topic easy to understand, and required no training.

Ollie has called out a few key areas about Discern

1. Never miss a filing - filing tasks come automatically to their email, and can be filed directly out of Discern
2. Franchise taxes, handled - even tricky, easy to miss franchise taxes are tracked in Discern, and Ollie gets notified when they have them due as well as detailed guidance
3. Pre-filled filings - Ollie never has to re-enter information, as filings are pre-filled based on previous responses
4. Low effort - most tasks require only minutes of review
5. No training required - the product and user experience strip away the complexity, and Ollie were able to use it out of the box
6. Great value - Discern's fees are excellent value for how much time, effort, and late fees/penalties they have been able to save