There’s no getting away from the fact that most businesses in the United States have to submit beneficial ownership information (BOI) reports to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) demands it. Your problem is that there is so much friction involved in submitting an accurate report, especially when you’re doing it manually via FinCEN’s e-filing system. There are optional steps – such as reporting company applicants – and the form lacks explanations for some of its most crucial parts.
It all adds up to a heightened regulatory burden your company has to absorb. And when FinCEN can change the reporting rules at any time, you have a lot to stay on top to get it right with BOI reporting. SaaS (Software as a Service) offers an answer. With the right SaaS BOI tools, you can automate your reports to increase efficiency and avoid the errors that put you in line for costly civil and criminal penalties.
The Benefits of SaaS Tools for Beneficial Ownership Reporting
There’s always a key question whenever you’re thinking about introducing a new type of tool into your business:
Why?
FinCEN already provides a filing system. But it’s entirely manual and so finicky that it can take hours to submit an accurate BOI report. That’s why BOI reporting SaaS tools are so vital to your business – they deliver benefits you simply don’t get when going it alone.
Enhanced Efficiency
The SaaS concept is pretty simple. The tool provider creates a piece of software to which you subscribe to gain access to that software’s features. In BOI reporting, that ease of use also translates into greater efficiency across the board.
Take data validation as an example.
Even a single error, such as a misstated address, in your BOI report puts you squarely in FinCEN’s crosshairs. It could levy daily civil fines that started at $500 but have since risen (and will continue to rise) based on inflation.
That’s where the FinCEN e-filing system presents a problem. Manually entering data into the FinCEN system creates the risk of validation errors, such as misspellings of beneficial owner names or improper citing of the unique identification documentation numbers FinCEN requires. A BOI reporting SaaS tool fixes those issues by validating data as it’s entered, checking against what you’ve already inputted into your form to ensure each data point aligns.
Throw automation into the mix and the efficiency data validation creates increases enormously.
Imagine a tool that can automate BOI reporting data entry by pulling names and information from documents, like driver’s licenses and passports. SaaS tools can do that for you. So, why risk errors with manual entry when you can automate?
Automation also comes to the fore with notification systems. It’s possible FinCEN could change its reporting criteria at any time. It’s already done it at least once, as it issued notices extending BOI filing deadlines in the wake of Hurricane Milton, Hurricane Debby, and several similar weather events. A SaaS system that automatically notifies you about criteria and reporting changes ensures you don’t have to try and keep up with every little change FinCEN makes by yourself.
BOI reporting SaaS tools are all about improving your efficiency in these types of ways. Add real-time data updating to the mix – crucial for when changes in beneficial ownership occur in your business – and you get a reporting tool that’s staying on top of issues you might miss.
Improved Data Accuracy
We touched on the heavy penalties FinCEN implements for faulty reports. Over $500 per day (the exact amount increases annually based on inflation) in civil penalties is bad enough. But FinCEN can also prosecute you criminally if it believes you’re purposely misleading it with inaccurate data in your BOI reports. How harsh are those penalties? They involve a $10,000 fine and up to two years in prison, which are punishments FinCEN can dole out individually or in tandem.
You want to avoid those penalties.
The previously mentioned data validation available using SaaS tools helps. Having a tool that can compare previously entered data against new data ensures you catch discrepancies before they make their way into your BOI reports.
There’s also data cleansing to consider. This process – which is also called data scrubbing – automatically fixes incorrect data. It also tracks and fixes formatting, eliminating one of the major bugbears you may have with BOI reporting. You don’t have to worry about correct data being submitted with incorrect formatting putting you in line for penalties when you have a BOI reporting SaaS tool cleansing your data.
Centralized Data Management
We often look at BOI reporting from the individual business side. That makes sense – almost every business (barring the few FinCEN exempts) has to submit a report. However, there’s another type of company that, though it has to submit reports itself, provides filing services for other businesses.
That’s where the centralized data management offered by BOI reporting SaaS tools comes in.
Imagine you have a report filing business with several dozen clients. Every single one of those clients has the same requirements in terms of getting their BOI reports filed on time and ensuring the information entered into those reports is accurate. Then, there are the new clients. Every company your business works with that will form in 2025 or beyond has just 30 days to submit its BOI report – not a huge amount of time when you’re dealing with a large client load.
What happens if you’re trying to handle all of those clients manually, with each being split across multiple platforms? You get data silos that force you to bounce between clients to gather data and, when it’s time to create a report, pull from multiple sources for completion. BOI reporting SaaS tools centralize the data you gather about your clients so you can create reports via a single dashboard. Each client still has its own space on that dashboard (or within that centralized data store). But your filing business can see everything it needs in one place, allowing for quicker data retrieval and entry.
By the way, this centralized data storage advantage is as important if you own multiple businesses as it is for filing companies that work with several clients.
Introducing BOI Agent SaaS: A Comprehensive Solution for Beneficial Ownership Reporting
What Is BOI Agent SaaS?
You need the right BOI reporting SaaS tool for your business.
Introducing BOI Agent – an SOC-certified business information reporting tool designed to simplify your reporting workflow.
Key Features of BOI Agent SaaS
BOI Agent’s in-house engineers have spent over two years tweaking the company’s SaaS offering for businesses like yours. Here are some of the software’s key features:
Collaborative Report Access
Have you ever worried about the liability issue when handling BOI reporting for your clients? They may send you information that you input correctly, but there’s always a chance that information is wrong. You’re left carrying the liability if your client’s mistakes result in an erroneous report. BOI Agent solves that with collaborative report access – your clients have access to (and sign off on) the BOI reports you create for them.
One-Click E-Filing
FinCEN estimates that a single BOI report filing takes around three hours, and that’s if the filing entity has a simple structure. Start adding trusts, subsidiaries, and more complex ownership structures into the mix and you get a day-long filing process. Or you could just do it all with BOI Agent. Its automated tools speed up the data entry process and its one-click e-filing system handles FinCEN’s overly-complicated filing for you.
Automation As Standard
We talked earlier about how automation not only speeds up your BOI filing but also helps you stay on top of compliance. BOI Agent’s BOI reporting SaaS tool automates wherever possible. Compliance reminders (such as scheduled monthly emails) help you stick to FinCEN’s rules. The software also provides automated report follow-ups sent to your clients to ensure they sign off on time for their report to be submitted by FinCEN’s deadlines.
How BOI Agent SaaS Simplifies Reporting
“Wonderful experience so far.”
“Super helpful – could not have taken care of the FinCEN filings without the BOI Agent software.”
Those are just a smattering of the reviews flowing in for BOI Agent, and they’re so glowing because the software simplifies BOI reporting in several ways. Automation is the big one. Requesting and processing report updates is easy thanks to the centralized dashboard, which accompanies the automated report follow-ups and compliance reminders we already mentioned. Filing in a single click also speeds things up dramatically. And with CSV importing, you can pull data into BOI Agent quickly without needing to manually type it in.
Simply put – BOI Agent is fast.
So fast that it takes minutes to complete reports that would otherwise take hours. You save time that you can use for new clients because your existing customers are satisfied with their reports the first time.
Choosing the Right SaaS Tool for Beneficial Ownership Reporting
Your SaaS journey begins with figuring out precisely what it is you need to look for from a piece of software. Take these key considerations into account – each can lead you in the right direction.
Key Considerations
- Features: It’s far too easy to be so dazzled by a feature list that you forget what your company actually needs from its BOI reporting SaaS tool. Don’t trip into that trap. Choose your tool on the basis of what you need rather than what it offers.
- Scalability: Growth is what you hope to achieve given the influx of businesses that need BOI reporting right now (and those that’ll need it in the future). Your SaaS tool has to facilitate that growth by scaling with your client list.
- Security: We’d be remiss not to mention BOI Agent’s SOC-2 certification here. Your BOI reporting SaaS tool has to show that it takes protecting the data you enter seriously.
- Cost: There’s no business that isn’t working within a budget of some description. Does your SaaS software align with how much you can spend per month or year? If it does, you have a great starting point. But remember – low-cost software may not be the best choice if it doesn’t offer the features you need.
The Benefits of BOI Agent SaaS
We come back to BOI Agent and the many benefits it offers your BOI reporting business. There’s the security aspect – SOC-2 certification ensures your data is protected – along with the greater efficiency on offer. You file reports in a single click rather than dealing with FinCEN’s complicated e-filing process.
There’s also a feature we haven’t touched on yet – branding.
You get full API access when you subscribe to BOI Agent, allowing you to integrate the software into your current workflow. You can even brand BOI Agent. Its white labeling service means the software truly becomes a part of your business.
Do BOI Reporting the SaaS Way
BOI reporting SaaS tools offer relief.
Relief from FinCEN’s overly complex filing system. Relief from the time and monetary costs of having to bounce between clients trying to gather information to ensure your BOI reports are accurate and compliant. To experience that relief, you need the right tool. BOI Agent is that tool – request a demo today to get a free trial that gives you a full taste of the features this tool brings to the table.
