Step by step. Official links included.
This is not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Read the official pages linked here. Partner offers are optional and labeled.
Brick, old plaster, and a winter that stops exterior work. Rowhouse access is part of an intown quote. Suburban siding is a different prep. Split them. In Columbus, the housing decides the visit: older brick in German Village and Clintonville, with basements, and a fast suburban edge in Dublin and Westerville. The weather on the truck is humid summers, cold winters, freeze, and ice that shows up often enough to matter for roofs and lines. German Village, Short North, and Clintonville are worth naming only when they are real stops. Dublin and Westerville are a different drive until you can reach them the same day. City of Columbus permits is the local counter to ask when the job needs a permit or a city registration. This page names that office. It does not invent a fee. German Village and the Short North are older and tighter. Clintonville is a different house again. Dublin and Westerville are where a lot of the new volume sits. A statewide Ohio page will not win the person who already typed the suburb. New residents north of the city search at night. They want the suburb named and a company that is not pretending German Village is the whole market.
older brick in German Village and Clintonville, with basements, and a fast suburban edge in Dublin and Westerville humid summers, cold winters, freeze, and ice that shows up often enough to matter for roofs and lines Interior and exterior as different seasons, with the prep named. In Columbus, OH, list German Village and Westerville together only if one crew really covers both.
Start the route in German Village, Short North, and Clintonville. Add Dublin and Westerville when you can reach them the same day. New residents north of the city search at night. They want the suburb named and a company that is not pretending German Village is the whole market.
The Ohio guide has the filing office. This page is the local version: what the first jobs are, which permit counter to call, and how to price a day here.
Some boxes are labeled Partner. ServiceBase has not joined those programs. The links go to each company's own homepage, not a tracking link. If a program later approves us, the address will change and we may earn a commission. You can file, insure, and bank anywhere. Official government links are not partner links. Nothing on this page is a discount code.
$500 in free advertising when you launch
The guide stays public. An account saves your state, city, and trade, and lets you mark each filing as you go. The advertising credit is reserved when you register. It can be spent after the free website is live.
Create a free account to track your progresspainter names that work here are plain. Use one you can spell from a driveway in German Village.
Search it at the SBA: state registration lookup before you order magnets. The voicemail, the invoice, and the Google profile should use that spelling.
Painters often start as sole proprietors and form an LLC when the jobs get larger than a few rooms or when a general contractor wants a company on the certificate. Either is a real start. The LLC filing does not decide whether a city wants a home-improvement registration. Read that separately. Ask an accountant if you are hiring painters as employees and still thinking of them as subcontractors.
We do not have a filing fee for Ohio that we are willing to print. Use the SBA lookup, choose Ohio, and read the fee on the state office's own page. Sole proprietors who operate under their own name often skip this filing. Confirm that on the same site.
If your customers are in Columbus, the registered-agent address still has to satisfy Ohio. Read the filing office's rule. A neighbor's kitchen table is not always an acceptable address.
An employer identification number is the business tax ID. The IRS issues it online at no charge and says you never have to pay a company to get one. If you form an LLC, file with the state first. The IRS says an EIN application can stall when the state filing is not done. A sole proprietor can often start with a Social Security number and get an EIN when a bank or a hire requires it.
Apply on the IRS page if you want the number yourself. LegalZoom, the partner beside this step, can request it while they form the company. That service is optional. The IRS fee is still zero either way.
Check the contractor or home-improvement board for painting, and read any project-cost threshold on that site. Exterior repairs that go past paint can be a different license. Ask the city about a business license either way.
State page: Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board. This board covers specific construction trades, not every lawn or cleaning business. Check the city for the rest.
City of Columbus permits is the local counter for work in Columbus. We are naming that office, not linking a fee schedule we have not read. Call them or open the city's own site and ask what a new painter has to register before the first job in Short North.
The Ohio guide repeats the board link and tells you what we could not verify. Read it before you pay a filing service.
General liability for overspray, floors, and a ladder falling the wrong way. If you spray, say so to the insurer. Commercial auto when the van carries ladders and paint as the business. Workers' compensation before a second painter is on a ladder. A certificate is a normal request from a contractor who hired you for the interior.
Workers' compensation is a state program. Before anyone works with you, including a friend, ask an insurer and the state labor office whether you must carry it. This guide does not quote a headcount, because those rules differ and the state page is the source. The SBA page describes the common policies. It does not sell them. Buy the policy before you work in a house in Columbus.
Deposits on paint and the final check should hit a business account. Material stores will put the company name on the receipt if the card matches. Keep the deposit schedule on the proposal so you are not funding a whole interior on a personal card.
The bank will usually ask for your ID, the EIN or your Social Security number, and the formation papers if you filed an LLC. A checking account and a habit of setting tax money aside are enough at the start.
Price interior and exterior separately. Rooms or elevation, occupied or empty, and what prep includes: caulk, patch, sand, primer. Color advice is optional. Prep is the job. Cabinets are their own price.
Climate decides when exterior paint will fail and when you can apply it. Build dry time into the schedule. Do not quote a whole exterior from photos without asking about the surface: stucco, wood, brick, or previously painted siding.
humid summers, cold winters, freeze, and ice that shows up often enough to matter for roofs and lines older brick in German Village and Clintonville, with basements, and a fast suburban edge in Dublin and Westerville That is why a price copied from another metro will miss. Interior and exterior as different seasons, with the prep named. In Columbus, OH, list German Village and Westerville together only if one crew really covers both.
Write the price you want for the common job in German Village and the price you want for a far stop in Westerville. If the second number is not worth the drive, leave Westerville off the service area.
Claim the Google Business Profile for Columbus, OH. Set hours you answer. The service area should list German Village, Short North, and Clintonville if those are real stops, and it should leave off towns you will not drive.
Ask for a review after a clean job, and ask them to mention the neighborhood and the task. A review that says the work and Dublin helps the next search. A review that says 'great service' does not.
Google Business Profile with photos of your own edges and the neighborhoods you work. Reviews should say interior or exterior and the area. The website splits those services and the form asks for rooms or elevation and timing. ServiceBase turns that into a public page and a list of requests.
When the name and the phone are real, create the free painter site with Columbus already filled in. Quote requests land in your list. The site does not replace City of Columbus permits.
$500 in free advertising when you launch
Signup asks for an email and a password. No card. This guide opens the next step with the trade and city filled in. You can change every line after.
Pick the service you can finish, search the name at the SBA: state registration lookup, get the free EIN from the IRS, read the license page (Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board), call City of Columbus permits, insure the work, open a business account, and publish a page that names German Village and the jobs you want. Interior and exterior as different seasons, with the prep named.
Check the contractor or home-improvement board for painting, and read any project-cost threshold on that site. Exterior repairs that go past paint can be a different license. Ask the city about a business license either way. Start at the Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board. Then ask City of Columbus permits what the city adds.
Price interior and exterior separately. Rooms or elevation, occupied or empty, and what prep includes: caulk, patch, sand, primer. Color advice is optional. Prep is the job. Cabinets are their own price. humid summers, cold winters, freeze, and ice that shows up often enough to matter for roofs and lines Time the first ten jobs in German Village and Clintonville before you copy a price from another city.
You can draft it. Put it in public under the name you will actually use, with the phone you answer. If the state requires the license before you advertise the work, wait. The free ServiceBase site does not file the company. Signup can open with painter and Columbus filled in so you are not retyping them.
Ohio filing and license · Free painter website in Columbus, OH · All trades in Columbus, OH
Prefer a one-time score? The AI visibility checklist stays in this browser. It is not emailed.