# Texas SB 140: the texting checklist for a Texas business owner A year after Texas SB 140 took effect, what a local business should check before texting customers: consent on your own forms, quiet hours, records, and the carrier registration most texts fail. Not legal advice. By Ryan Nichols | The LeadFlow Pro | Published 2026-10-09 Current guide: https://www.theleadflowpro.com/articles/texas-sb-140-business-texting-checklist Texas changed its texting rules a year ago, and most of the business owners I talk to found out the way you find out about any law: someone mentioned a lawsuit. Senate Bill 140 took effect September 1, 2025. It rewrote the definition of telephone solicitation in Chapter 302 of the Business and Commerce Code from a "telephone call" to a "call or other transmission," which brings marketing texts under rules that had been written for phone calls, including the chapter's registration and disclosure requirements. K&L Gates published a one-year review on September 14, 2026. The short version: the State has argued in court that consent-based messaging does not need the registration, the Secretary of State's FAQ says the same, no contested decision has settled it, and the risk sits with businesses that text people who never asked. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I set up texting systems for local businesses, and what follows is the checklist we run so a client can hand a lawyer a clean file instead of a shoebox. If you send promotional texts in Texas, buy an hour of a Texas attorney's time. This article is what to bring to that hour. ## The checklist **1. Know which of your texts are marketing.** A reply to someone who texted you is a conversation. A reminder for an appointment they booked is a transaction. "Fall tune-up special, book this week" to your whole customer list is marketing. The rules get strictest on the third kind, and most small businesses send all three from the same phone without noticing the difference. **2. Get consent on your own forms, in writing, unticked by default.** Every form on your website that collects a phone number should have a separate checkbox for texts, not pre-checked, that says what you will send and how often. Save the date, the number, the form, and the page. Our forms on this site do exactly that, and the consent line is written out where anyone can read it. **3. Keep the record where you can find it in two years.** The consent, the first message, the opt-out. If a dispute comes, the business with the record is in a different position from the business with a memory. **4. Honor opt-outs instantly and everywhere.** STOP means stop on that number and on every list you run. If a customer texts your office line to opt out and your review tool keeps texting from a different number, you have a problem that no consent form fixes. **5. Respect the hours.** Federal telemarketing rules keep calls and texts between 8 AM and 9 PM in the recipient's time zone, and Texas has its own hour limits in the solicitation rules. We set every automated message to send between 8 AM and 8 PM Central and to queue overnight. {{CHART:when-texts-come-in}} That is our own data, and it says the quiet-hours question mostly answers itself. People reach local businesses in the daytime. If you reply inside the windows they already use, you are rarely near the line. **6. Register the number with the carriers.** This one is not Texas law. It is the carriers, and it is the reason most business texts fail. Business texting from a regular phone number goes through A2P 10DLC registration, and Forbes Technology Council wrote in September about how many businesses are breaking those rules without knowing it. Unregistered traffic gets filtered with no bounce. Registered traffic that does not match the samples you registered gets filtered too. If customers say "I never got your text," check this before you check anything else. **7. Make it easy for the customer to text first.** The cleanest consent is a conversation the customer started. A text link on your website, your Google listing, your estimates and your invoices does that in one tap. ## Make the customer text you first The cleanest consent you can get is a customer who texts you. A text link on your website, your Google listing and your invoices opens their messaging app with a message already written. They tap send, you reply, and the conversation started on their side. This tool writes the link. It does not write your consent policy, and it does not register your number with the carriers. Open the working tool: https://www.theleadflowpro.com/tools/sms-link-generator 1. **Use the business line that is registered, not your cell.** The number in the link should be the one your business texts from, the one you registered or will register with the carriers. Mixing a personal cell into customer texting is how records get lost. 2. **Write the opening message as a request, not a sales line.** 'Hi, I would like a quote for' and a blank beats 'Sign me up for deals.' The first text sets the tone of the whole thread, and a quote request is a conversation a customer expects you to answer. 3. **Put the link where people are already deciding.** The contact page, the Google Business Profile, the estimate email, the invoice footer. One tap in those places starts more conversations than any form. ### How to read your result - A text link produces an inbound text, which is the clearest record that the customer opened the conversation. Keep the thread. - It does not replace a written consent checkbox for marketing texts. A quote request is not permission to send promotions next spring. Ask for that separately, in writing, and keep the record. - If your number is not registered with the carriers, some of your replies will not arrive no matter how clean the consent was. Registration is the first job. **8. Review the list before any blast.** Who on this list asked for marketing texts, when, and where is the record? If the answer for a chunk of them is "they bought from us once," that chunk gets an email, not a text, until they say otherwise. ## What this looks like when it is set up right A customer fills out a quote form on a site you own. The form has two unchecked boxes, one for email, one for texts, each saying what they get. They check the text box. The system saves the consent with a timestamp and the page. A text goes out within a minute from your registered business line, during allowed hours, saying who you are and what happens next. They reply. The thread lives on your line, logged. If they ever text STOP, every list you run drops them that minute. None of that is exotic. It is a form, a registered line, a log, and a rule about hours. We build it for clients as part of the phone and follow-up setup, and the form above is how you ask. ## What this does not cover Whether your specific messages count as solicitation under Texas law, whether you need the state registration and bond, and what your exposure is if you have already been texting a list without consent. Those are lawyer questions, and the K&L Gates piece is a good thing to read before the call so you ask the right ones. ## The bottom line Texting works because people read texts. That is also why the rules are tightening. Ask in writing, keep the record, honor stops, text in daylight, register the line, and let customers start the conversation when you can. Do that and the law is a document in a folder instead of a letter in the mail. ## Questions people ask ### Does Texas SB 140 apply to a small business texting its own customers? It can. SB 140 changed Chapter 302 of the Texas Business and Commerce Code so that 'telephone solicitation' covers a call or other transmission, which brings marketing texts under the chapter's registration and disclosure rules, for conduct from September 1, 2025 on. K&L Gates' one-year review notes the State has taken the position in court that consent-based messaging does not need the registration, the Secretary of State's FAQ says the same, and neither is binding precedent yet. We are not lawyers. If you send promotional texts to Texans, pay a Texas attorney for an hour before the next batch, and keep every consent record either way. ### What counts as consent for texting? The safest form is written, specific and kept: a checkbox on your own form that says what you will text and how often, unticked by default, with the date, the phone number, and the page it was on saved somewhere you can find in two years. A customer texting you first is a strong record for replying to them. It is not permission to put them on a promotion list. Ask for that separately. ### What are quiet hours for texting? Texas's telephone solicitation rules restrict calls and now texts to certain hours, and federal rules restrict telemarketing to 8 AM to 9 PM in the recipient's time zone. The practical answer for a local business is simpler: text between 8 AM and 8 PM Central, reply to inbound texts whenever they come in, and let automated messages queue until morning. Our own records show almost nobody texts a business after 8 PM anyway. ### Why do my texts not arrive even though customers asked for them? Because the carriers filter business texts from numbers that are not registered under A2P 10DLC, and they compare what you send against the samples you registered. Unregistered traffic gets blocked quietly, with no bounce. If replies from your business line go missing, registration is the first thing to check, before anyone touches the wording. --- Created by The LeadFlow Pro. 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