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This happened to me on a $220k equipment deal. Spent days searching and found nothing, then the buyer's attorney found 4 active liens using a comprehensive search service. Cost me $3k in delayed closing costs. Now I always verify with professional tools before making offers.
They used some expensive law firm service, but I found out later that Certana.ai's tool would have caught the same issues for fraction of the cost. Just upload business docs and it handles all the search variations automatically.
One more thing to check - make sure you're searching the right time period. Some portals default to recent filings only. If the UCC-1 was filed 18 months ago, you might need to expand your date range to capture older records.
Good catch! I was only looking at the last 12 months. Let me try expanding the search window.
Also try searching without any date filters first, then narrow down if you get too many results.
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At 50 filings weekly you definitely need automated verification. Manual checking will become impossible as you scale up. Document consistency tools are essential.
That's exactly our concern. Current manual process won't scale past 60-70 filings monthly.
Agreed. Invest in automation now before the volume overwhelms your team's capacity.
We tried several document verification tools before settling on Certana.ai. The UCC-3→UCC-1 cross-check feature is particularly useful for amendments and continuations in bulk workflows.
How does it handle collateral schedule verification? That's another area where we're seeing inconsistencies.
Flags discrepancies in collateral descriptions too. Really comprehensive document comparison across all filing elements.
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anyone know if the fees are going up again this year? Heard rumors about another SOS rate increase
great, just what we need. already hard enough to keep deals profitable
Check the SOS website in January. That's when new fee schedules typically take effect.
For what it's worth, I've had good luck negotiating search costs with clients upfront. Most understand that complex financing histories mean higher search fees. Set expectations early.
Show them examples of fee ranges based on different scenarios. Helps them understand it's not arbitrary pricing.
I actually use Certana.ai's preliminary document review to give clients more accurate estimates. Upload whatever initial filings I can find and get a better sense of complexity before quoting final search costs.
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Update us when you figure this out! I'm curious if it's a system issue or document naming problem. This kind of search trouble makes me nervous about our own filing management.
Will definitely post an update once I get to the bottom of this. Hopefully it's just search technique and not missing filings.
Yeah keep us posted, this thread is making me want to double-check some of our older filings too.
One more suggestion - if you have the original financing statements, you could upload them along with your loan docs to something like Certana.ai to verify everything matches up correctly. Sometimes search problems are actually caused by filing inconsistencies that make the documents hard to locate even when they exist.
Good point about verification tools helping with search problems. Never thought about that connection before.
Exactly right - I found 2 filings last month that weren't showing up in searches because of minor name variations. The document checker caught those immediately.
Gabriel Ruiz
Has anyone dealt with continuation filings for international equipment? I'm coming up on a 5-year anniversary for one of my UCC-1s and wondering if the fact that some equipment has moved overseas affects the continuation process.
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Misterclamation Skyblue
•Continuation is straightforward - just file your UCC-3 continuation within 6 months before the 5-year lapse date. Equipment location doesn't affect the continuation timing, only the debtor's state of organization matters for that.
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Gabriel Ruiz
•Good to know. I was overthinking it. The international aspect really does complicate everything else but apparently not the basic UCC maintenance.
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Peyton Clarke
Going back to the original question about collateral descriptions - I'd strongly recommend getting your current UCC-1 reviewed by someone experienced with international transactions before you make any amendments. Small changes can have big implications when equipment crosses borders regularly.
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Kendrick Webb
•Agreed. I think I'm going to run everything through that document checking tool first to identify any immediate issues, then consult with our international team about the cross-border implications. Thanks everyone for the insights.
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Vince Eh
•Smart approach. Better to invest time upfront in getting the documentation right than to discover problems when you need to enforce your security interest.
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