What permits do you need to open a contractor or trade in Green Bay?

There is no single figure, and any site quoting one is rounding away the part that matters. Of the 10 records listed for a contractor or trade in Green Bay, WI, 2 apply to every business of this type and 8 are conditional. Adding every fee on the page together would overstate what most operators pay, because it would include permits they never need.

Of the 2 that always apply, 1 carry a flat fee, coming to $75.00. That is a floor, not a total. 1 of the 10 are charged as a range or a formula set by the issuing agency, and 3 have no fee published at all. The ones that vary:

Commercial Building Permit: General construction: $0.07/sq ft (building group 1) or $0.14/sq ft (building group 2). Plan approval fees: principal-use building plan $125, accessory-use building plan $125, HVAC plan $125, plumbing system plan $125, sign structural plan $75. Roofing replacement $100 flat plus $0.01/sq ft; siding $100 flat plus $0.01/sq ft. Moving a building is $100 base plus $0.14/sq ft of foundation area; razing/demolition is $100. Commercial electrical is $0.05–$0.09/sq ft plus a project-cost tier ($100 for $0–$10,000, up to $600 for over $300,000, plus $100 per additional $100,000); commercial plumbing is $8 per fixture plus $50 per water/sewer connection; commercial HVAC follows the same $0.05–$0.09/sq ft structure as electrical.

Permits for a contractor or trade in Green Bay, WI come from 4 separate offices: City of Green Bay Community & Economic Development, Building/Zoning Permits, City of Green Bay Clerk's Office, Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services, Division of Industry Services, Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate and Consumer Services. No single office issues them all, which is why an opening means filing in several places rather than one.

• City of Green Bay Community & Economic Development, Building/Zoning PermitsIssues 2 permits on this page: Commercial Building Permit, Certificate of Occupancy100 N. Jefferson Street, Green Bay, WI 54301 · (920) 448-3000www.greenbaywi.gov/321/Commercial-Permits
• City of Green Bay Clerk's OfficeIssues 2 permits on this page: Residential Building Contractors Licence, No General Business Licence100 N. Jefferson Street, Room 106, Green Bay, WI 54301 · (920) 448-3010www.greenbaywi.gov/196/Clerk
• Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services, Division of Industry ServicesIssues 2 permits on this page: General Contractor Licence (not required by Wisconsin), Dwelling Contractor Certification4822 Madison Yards Way, Madison, WI 53705 · (608) 266-2112dsps.wi.gov/Pages/Professions/DwellingContractor/Default.aspx
• Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Division of Corporate and Consumer ServicesIssues 4 permits on this page: Articles of Organization (LLC), Articles of Incorporation, Annual Report, General Business Licence (does not exist in Wisconsin)4822 Madison Yards Way, North Tower, Madison, WI 53705 · (608) 261-7577onestop.wi.gov

Typical processing time is stated as approximately one week.

Explicitly scoped to residential contracting — no separate commercial/general contractor registration or bond requirement was found at the city level, consistent with Wisconsin having no state-level commercial general contractor licence either.

No licence fee applies. Confirmed by the absence of any general licence line in the city's own comprehensive, itemized fee schedule (which covers dozens of narrow categories down to beekeeping and hen-keeping) and by the Clerk's own licence listing. Several aggregator sites claim a general licence is required and renewed annually — this is not corroborated by any primary source and is treated as inaccurate.

A separate Business License Compliance Letter for commercial uses is $50.

No fee, because Wisconsin licenses no general or commercial building contractor. The department's trades credential schedule enumerates every contractor credential it issues — automatic fire sprinkler and its maintenance variant, dwelling and dwelling restricted, electrical, elevator, HVAC and utility — and no general or building contractor appears anywhere in it. State-level contractor regulation therefore reaches only residential work on one- and two-family dwellings, through the dwelling contractor scheme, and the specific trades. A commercial project still needs plan review and permits, and any electrical, plumbing, HVAC, fire sprinkler or elevator work must be done by the relevant licensed trade, but the general contractor itself holds no state licence. Municipalities may register contractors separately.

Forty dollars cheaper online than on paper, and the saving applies only to LLCs — a corporation costs $100 either way. Expediting is available and steep: $100 for next business day, $250 for four hours over the counter and $500 for one. All fees are non-refundable. Note that the department's fee table shows foreign entities at a hundred dollars with a plus sign, and what the plus covers is not explained anywhere published, so no foreign registration figure is recorded here.

A flat $100 with no authorised-shares component at all, which is worth stating because several states — Texas, Delaware and Nevada among them — scale this fee by how many shares you authorise. Wisconsin makes you declare a share count on the application and then charges the same regardless. Filing online adds only the one-dollar portal fee, so unlike an LLC there is no meaningful paper-versus-online difference. A nonstock corporation is much cheaper at $35.

An LLC and a corporation pay the same, and the paper price is simply the online price plus the fifteen-dollar surcharge the department introduced in March 2024 — the two documents reconcile exactly. The due date is not a fixed calendar day: it is the end of whichever calendar quarter contains the anniversary of your registration, so a business formed in February files by 31 March every year. Foreign entities always file by 31 March. There is no monetary late penalty at all — the consequence is delinquent status and, after an extended period, administrative dissolution, with reinstatement requiring the accumulated per-year fees.

No fee, because Wisconsin issues no general business licence — its own single-point-of-entry portal defines the basic requirements most new businesses need as exactly three registrations, entity with the financial institutions department, tax with revenue and unemployment insurance with workforce development, and there is no licensing step among them. What replaces it is activity-specific licensing plus whatever the municipality requires. One honest caveat on how this was established: no state page says in words that Wisconsin has no general business licence, so the finding rests on the state's own exhaustive enumeration of what a new business must do.

Two credentials that interlock rather than substitute. The dwelling contractor certification is the business's — it is what lets a firm contract for work on one- and two-family dwellings and pull building permits — and the business must additionally hold, or employ someone who holds, the individual dwelling contractor qualifier credential, which renews at $30 and requires a twelve-hour approved course within the year before applying. The money that matters is not the fee: the business must show financial responsibility of at least $25,000 by bond or insurance, plus liability cover of at least $250,000 per occurrence. Initial application fees for either credential are not published anywhere — the forms say only that they are calculated in the department's licensing portal. Reinstatement is $200. Note this reaches residential work only; Wisconsin licenses no general or commercial building contractor at all.