March 7, 2025

The Business and Professional Classification Report is used to supplement the other economic surveys at the Census Bureau with business births and helps to ensure proper industry classification in the Economic Census. This survey covers employer firms with establishments located in the United States.  These firms can be classified in all sectors covered by the Economic Census as defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

The Business and Professional Classification Report requests firms to designate their type of business activity, two months of sales or receipts, principle lines of merchandise, whether the firm is owned or owns another establishment, not-for-profit status, type of operation for wholesale firms, inventories, and method of selling for retail and wholesale firms.

To report online:

1. Sign-in or Register at https://portal.census.gov/portal
2. Add your authentication code
3. Report by clicking on “REPORT NOW.”  You can return to your account over multiple sessions to complete.
4. For assistance completing this survey, please sign-in to your Census Bureau account at https://portal.census.gov and send us a secure message or call the customer help line at 1-800-253-1882, Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
5. Please visit How Do I Get Started? for additional information. 
6. Please visit How-To Video for information on Signing into the Respondent portal, via your Census Bureau account.
7. For survey specific information, please visit our FAQs.

To help you prepare for online reporting, click on the appropriate survey questions and instructions below.
(All files are in Adobe PDF file format and are for informational purposes only)

Title 13, United States Code (U.S.C.), Sections 131 and 182, require businesses and other organizations included in the survey to answer the questions and submit a response.

Title 13, United States Code, Section 9, requires the Census Bureau to keep your information CONFIDENTIAL and can use your responses only to produce statistics.  The Census Bureau is not permitted to publicly release your responses in a way that could identify your business, organization, or institution.  Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, your data are protected from cybersecurity risks through screening of the systems that transmit your data.

Below are a few common items you can use to verify the legitimacy of this survey:

1. Ensure the Web address provided in the letter is a "census.gov" domain.
2. Correspondence sent in the form of a letter or email will contain reporting instructions and a phone number for survey assistance. Any email correspondence related to this survey will come from a census.gov address.
3. On the sign-in screen, a warning message should be present stating the respondent is accessing a U.S. Government computer.
4. After clicking on the “Report Now” button in the Respondent Portal, the OMB Number and OMB Approval Expiration information will appear in the upper right on all screens of the electronic reporting instrument. The bottom of the screen should have a link for the “Burden Statement” which also contains the OMB eight-digit number.