Opening a Business Bank Account

Tools & Resources

Get the Full Course

Create your free Business Center account to get access to the complete Small Business Startup Course and all the worksheets.

Get Started Now

Articles

• Do I need a Business Bank Account? 
• Review: Best Banks for Small Business 2024

Selecting the Right Bank for Your Business

A business checking account not only helps you use and store your money but also helps you separate your personal and business assets. It allows you to collect money through merchant services, and it can be used to help you build a good relationship with your bank to help you get a loan.

Opening a Business Bank Account – Transcript

Every business needs a bank account – especially limited liability companies and corporations. If you don't have a business bank account, you can be held personally liable should someone come after your business and sue your company. And having a business bank account makes processing payments significantly easier. And it can provide business owners with a lot of perks and cost savings as well. 

In this video, we'll walk through the steps of opening a business bank account and help you select the best bank for your small business. 

Hey everybody, Will Scheren here from Small Business Startup Guide by TRUiC. This video is part of a larger course dedicated to helping small business owners cut through the noise and get to the essentials of starting and operating their business. If that sounds like it would be really useful to you, be sure to like and subscribe. 

A business checking account not only helps you use and store your money, but it also helps you separate your personal and business assets. It allows you to collect money through merchant services, and it can be used to help you build a good relationship with your bank to help you get a loan. 

The steps to opening a business bank account are simple – it's doing research, gathering proper documentation, going through the application process, and funding the account. 

Concerning researching your bank options, you’ll want to research which bank – and which business checking account at the bank – is right for your business. And we encourage you to do your own research separately. But we've been helping small businesses for a long time, and we've worked with a lot of different banks. We've also worked out some extra perks and deals with these banks for our audience, and if you use the link below this video to research them, you can enjoy those benefits as well. 

Once you find the right bank, it's time to gather your documentation. When you go to open a business checking account, you'll need to have these pieces of documentation close by so you don't get slowed down. We covered how to obtain most of these documents in the last section of the course. 

You'll need documentation that verifies the name and general nature of your business, your incorporation documents, a DBA certificate, if you have one, along with your Employer Identification Number, funds for an initial deposit, and you'll also need two forms of personal ID to verify that you are who you say you are. These can always be a state-issued driver's license and a US passport, but different banks may allow other forms of personal identification. 

After selecting a bank and assembling the needed documentation, get in contact with the bank and let the banker know that you're interested in setting up a checking account and online banking. Be sure to also ask the banker if setting up any other accounts, like a small business saving account, could reduce some of your small business checking fees. Explain to your banker the goals that you established earlier in the course and briefly explain to them how much money you plan to make and the average amount and the size of the transactions that you'll make each month, and then ask them to ensure that you save as much money as possible while you bank with them. 

Once you have the account set up, you'll need to put some money in it with the initial deposit. If you've been following along with us in the course, this would be the initial owner's investment that you decided upon earlier in the course. Different banks have different minimums concerning a minimum deposit, and keep in mind that some banks will require you to keep a certain amount of cash in your business checking account. 

After you've created an account and made an initial deposit, you'll be provided with a business debit card so you can easily make purchases for your business. You'll be able to connect a merchant account through your online banking portal, which we'll be showing you how to do later in the course when we discuss setting up a commerce solution for your business. This will allow you to process credit card transactions and have those funds drop automatically into your business bank account. 

It's important to know that you should only use your business bank account for business-related expenses. If you use your business bank account for personal expenses – whether it's on purpose or on accident – you can get in trouble with the IRS and risk losing your liability protection. 

Setting up a business bank account is easy: simply research which bank is going to be best for you, gather the documents you need, formally apply for the bank account, and add funds to the account. 

In the next video in the course, we'll be talking about another business back-office essential: applying for credit cards for your business. 

This video is part of a step-by-step course that gives business owners all of the essential information to start and operate their business. We've provided a link below this video to give you access to all of the free and discounted tools that we mentioned in this course. 

Be sure to like and subscribe to get more of this content. We’ll see you in the next video, and if you have any questions, let us know.