Two kinds of money
Every order can contain two very different things, and they behave differently when you want a refund:
- Our service fee — what you pay Groundwork for preparing and filing your documents. This is ours, and this is what we can refund.
- The state filing fee — what your state charges to process your formation. We collect it and hand it straight to your state. Once it is submitted, it belongs to the state, and states do not give it back, even if the filing is rejected or you change your mind.
Where your order is, and what that means
Full refund of our fee
If you cancel before we submit your documents to the state, we refund 100% of our service fee. If we had not yet paid your state fee, that comes back too.
State fee is gone, our fee is earned
Once your documents are with the state, the state filing fee is not refundable, by us or anyone. Our service fee is also earned at this point, because the work you paid for has been done. If something went wrong, read the guarantee below before assuming you are stuck.
Renewing services stop when you say so
Registered agent, compliance, and package renewals can be cancelled any time before the renewal date, and you will not be charged again. See below for the detail.
Our accuracy guarantee
We advertise a 100% accuracy guarantee and we mean it literally: if your filing is rejected or wrong because we made a mistake preparing or submitting it, we correct it, we file it again, and we pay the state's re-filing fee ourselves. You do not pay twice for our error.
This does not cover things outside our control: information you gave us that was wrong or incomplete, a business name the state refused, or a state's own discretionary decision. In those cases we will tell you exactly what happened and what it costs to fix.
If the state rejects your filing
Rejections happen, most often over name availability. Here is what we do:
- Our mistake — we fix and re-file at our cost, as above.
- Name unavailable or information you supplied — we come back to you with the state's reason and re-file with corrected details. The state will usually charge its fee again, and that new fee is yours to pay.
- You decide not to continue — we refund our service fee for any work not yet performed. The original state fee cannot be recovered.
Registered agent and renewing services
- Cancel before your renewal date and you are not charged for the next year.
- If you cancel partway through a year you have already paid for, we keep serving as your agent until that term ends. Partial years are not refunded, because we hold the address and receive mail for you the whole time.
- Cancelling with us does not remove us from your state record — you must appoint a new registered agent with your state, using its change-of-agent form.
- If we ever fail to deliver a document we received for you and that failure was ours, contact us. We will refund that year's agent fee.
Free packages and add-ons
Our Starter package has no service fee, so an order with only a state filing fee has nothing for us to refund beyond that fee's status above. Add-ons you paid for but that we have not yet delivered are fully refundable.
How to ask for a refund
Email us at [support email] with your tracking number (it looks like GW-7K2M4) and one line about what happened. We aim to respond within two business days, and approved refunds go back to your original payment method, typically within 5 to 10 business days depending on your bank.
Please talk to us before disputing a charge with your bank. A chargeback freezes the order and usually stops us from finishing or fixing the filing, which tends to leave you worse off than a conversation would.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy, and the date at the top will always show the current version. The policy in effect when you placed your order is the one that applies to that order.