What is a Business?

The Business Object

The Middesk API operates on a single primary object. We call this object a Business and it represents the business entity that you are engaging with. You created your first Business in the previous Introduction section and received the following response. Notice how the status is still marked as open, which is just one part of the Lifecycle of a Business. We will learn more about this Lifecycle in the next section.

{
  "object": "business",
  "id": "5966eefe-7ba5-4e98-9f95-1e8d0bca6ec6",
  "name": "Middesk",
  "external_id": null,
  "created_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.421Z",
  "updated_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.421Z",
  "status": "open",
  "addresses": [
    {
      "object": "address",
      "address_line1": "2180 Bryant St",
      "address_line2": "Unit 210",
      "city": "san francisco",
      "state": "CA",
      "postal_code": "94110",
      "full_address": "2180 Bryant St, Unit 210, san francisco, CA 94110",
      "created_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.533Z",
      "updated_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.533Z"
    }
  ],
  "website": {
    "url": "https://www.middesk.com"
  },
  "tin": {
    "tin": "12-3410000"
  }
}

What are Resources?

Each Business has a number of different Resources attached to it. In the example above, we can see that our Business has the addresses, website, and tin Resources. Resources can be used as an evaluation factor in various compliance scenarios or to drive different programmatic workflows in your implementation.

It is important to note that in the real world, a Business is not a static entity. As a result, you will find that a Business' Resources might change as you continue to engage with it. To receive updates about a Business on an ongoing basis, consider our Monitoring product.

{
  "object": "business",
  "id": "5966eefe-7ba5-4e98-9f95-1e8d0bca6ec6",
  "name": "Middesk",
  "external_id": null,
  "created_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.421Z",
  "updated_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.421Z",
  "status": "open",
  "addresses": [
    {
      "object": "address",
      "address_line1": "2180 Bryant St",
      "address_line2": "Unit 210",
      "city": "san francisco",
      "state": "CA",
      "postal_code": "94110",
      "full_address": "2180 Bryant St, Unit 210, san francisco, CA 94110",
      "created_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.533Z",
      "updated_at": "2019-02-04T18:17:20.533Z"
    }
  ],
  "website": {
    "url": "https://www.middesk.com"
  },
  "tin": {
    "tin": "12-3410000"
  },
  "people": [
    {
      "object": "person",
      "name": "John Doe",
      "titles": [
        {
          "object": "person_title",
          "title": "president"
        },
        {
          "object": "person_titles",
          "title": "registered agent"
        }
      ],
      "sources": [
        {
          "id": "5d1308ad-0d33-472d-8e61-ed223649d074",
          "type": "registration",
          "metadata": {
            "state": "CA",
            "status": "active",
            "file_number": "C4221590"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
}

Middesk is constantly evaluating the identity of that Business and will always keep you up-to-date with new and relevant information.

Now that you understand what the Business object is and have looked over the different Resources that are associated with a Business, let's move on to the next section to learn about the Lifecycle of a Business.