Mark Kohler explains what banks need to open a business account: Articles of Incorporation or Organization, an EIN, and bylaws or minutes. He recommends a simple small-business account and stresses keeping business and personal money completely separate by running all business income and expenses through the business account.
Chapters
I want you to open a business bank account. Now, here's why that process of just writing everything down in Excel, it's kind of messy, right? You're pulling money, you're pulling expenses from everywhere. You're writing down income from everywhere. What we want to work towards is being strict with ourselves and trying to use a business bank account for all of our deposits of income and our expenses. Now, when you do that, you're going to go down to the bank and they're going to say, hey, where's your LLC or your corporation? You're going to go in with your Articles of Incorporation, your ein, or if you have an llc, it's called Articles of Organization. You'll have this electronic identification number. Maybe you have the bylaws or minutes and all those things. That's something we do at our law firm, helping clients every day. We literally have a bank packet. We email it to you, print it out, take it to the bank. They will love you. Get down to the bank and open up this business bank account. And let me forewarn you do not get their sexy, expensive corporate bank account with the big fat checks. Just walk in and go, I'm a small business owner. I need a simple small business bank account. I need some simple cheap checks. I want a debit card. Go. And then I want you to start using that bank account as much as you can. Separate accounting. You're going let your personal account pay for your personal stuff and your business account pay for business stuff.
