Electronic Reporting Requirements for Scrap Metal Dealers

Electronic reporting requirements vary significantly by state. Some require real-time or daily reporting of all transactions to a state law enforcement database. Others have no requirement at all.

States With Mandatory Electronic Reporting

State	Required System	Frequency	Coverage
Florida	FDLE Secondhand Dealer Reporting System	Daily (within 24 hrs)	All regulated metal transactions
Georgia	GILE (Georgia Interface for Law Enforcement)	Within 24 hours	Catalytic converter transactions
Virginia	VATIX	Within 24 hours	Catalytic converters and nonferrous metals
Louisiana	LeadsOnline (approved)	Daily	All regulated metal transactions
Cook County (IL)	LeadsOnline	Daily	All regulated metal transactions

LeadsOnline

LeadsOnline is the most widely used third-party electronic reporting platform for scrap metal dealers in the U.S. It is accepted or mandated in hundreds of jurisdictions and integrates with most scrap management software. If your state or local jurisdiction requires electronic reporting and does not specify a system, LeadsOnline is typically the safest choice.

Setup Steps

1
Confirm your state's required system — Contact your state licensing agency to confirm exactly which system is required and whether your county has additional requirements.
2
Register a business account — Create an account with the required platform using your state license number.
3
Integrate with transaction software — Most platforms offer API integrations with major scrap management systems for automatic reporting.
4
Test before going live — Submit a test transaction and verify it appears correctly in the reporting system before your first real transaction.

FAQ

Document the outage with screenshots or system notifications. Most enforcement agencies take a reasonable approach to documented technical outages — they want compliance, not technical gotchas. Report all missed transactions as soon as the system is restored, noting the outage reason in your documentation.