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This is a new Federal requirement this year, and it’s a requirement of all businesses to file with US Treasury Department – Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. “The mission of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is to safeguard the financial system from illicit use, combat money laundering and its related crimes including terrorism, and promote national security through the strategic use of financial authorities and the collection, analysis, and dissemination of financial intelligence.”
We had been hearing about this new rule most of last year and were planning to act early on it once the year turned over to 2024. There’s some documents and artifacts you’ll need when you’re ready to file and I’ve listed them below. There’s also a Step-by-Step Guide that has been made available for you to download and follow along. The main Help page is here for other useful resources around this topic.
Information you’ll need to file:
- Your credentials with Login.gov
- A FinCen ID
- FEIN or Social Security Number
- Beneficial Owners contact information
- Documentation proof (State ID or Drivers License or Passport)
Link to the FinCen BOI main page
Overall, it doesn’t take long to file your information. Having all of our information in an easily accessible location or on your person will make the process quicker. Be sure to click on the button to add a beneficiary if your business has more than one. It was easy for me to miss the blue button on the right to do that and had to go back and edit the form. Once you’ve submitted your information you’ll be presented with a screen that shows your BOIR ID and the Status of your form along with your contact information. Download and save that for your records. If you’re someone who prints documents, do that and store this some where you’ll be able to recall it if you need it.
All Posts, Apps, Graphic Design
With all the new apps coming out these days, Upscayl is one that I really felt led to write about and share with you all. Have you ever had an image that you wanted to use but couldn’t due to it’s low quality and resolution? Maybe an old photograph that was slighly out of focus and would wish you could fix it? Well Upscayl is your solution! It’s a FREE desktop app that is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux and it uses AI to process the image. They’re working on a cloud version so that you may be able to use this within your browser or mobile device without the need to install anything at all.
There’s a few settings that I thought were amazing and wanted to highlight them:
Saving an Image as PNG or JPG
There’s two buttons that you can easily select how you’d want your image to be saved as. Either PNG (Portable Network Graphic) or as JPG.
Batch Upscayl
This toggle switch enables you to select all of the images you have in a select folder to perform the same upscaling option to all of them with a single command. This is extremely useful when you may have many images that you would like to process for better quality and not have to select them one by one and wait for them to process one by one.
Hope you find this helpful and useful in your day to day tasks. Let us know how this may have helped!
About Design Theory, All Posts
As the proud owner of Design Theory, I am thrilled to share a significant milestone in our journey. We have recently been certified as a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) by Orange County Government | Business Development Division. This achievement is opens up our business opportunities not just to Orange County Government, but also to GOAA, Orange County Public Schools, Orange County Library, and several more agencies.
The Business Development Division of Orange County’s initiative is to increase the utilization of minority and woman-owned businesses (M/WBE) in the County’s procurement process. Our certification as an MBE is a step forward in this direction, enabling us to contribute more significantly to our Central Florida economy. I recently attended a couple of meetings where I learned in great detail from the results of a 5 year Disparity Study, how to search through upcoming expiring contracts, and currently available/open contracts. There’s still more work I am responsible for like identifying closed contracts that our agency may have qualified for, terms, and how much the bids were awarded for. And this is managed through OpenGov.com, also allows you to see other MBEs who are interested in open bids as well as save and favorite agencies (to name a few features). There’s also an eBook OpenGov published called “The 2023 State of Local Government Report” and I would highly recommend that everyone reading this downloads a copy.
As our journey continues we’ll continue to share what we’ve learned and opportunities for other business owners to take advantage and participate. The goal for us is to expand our business through this sector and reach new levels of success and growth.
There’s several people that I’ve personally met and worked with and will continue to work with as we grow in this program. Shout out to Kesi, Patrice, and VaSantha! Knowing that we can stay connected If you’d like more information from the Business Development Division, below is their contact information:
Business Development Division
Internal Operations Centre II, 2nd Floor
400 E South Street
Orlando, FL 32801
Phone: (407) 836-7317
Email: BusinessDevelopment@ocfl.net
