Setting up a Corporate Bank Account
When you own a business it is important that you keep your companies finances separate from your own. This is true even if you are the sole owner of the business. This means that you are going to need to open a corporate bank account for your company. This is fairly straightforward and generally not that different from opening a personal bank account but there are some differences that need to be kept in mind. The biggest difference will be the need for a lot more documentation.
The first step to opening a corporate bank account is to determine what type of account you need. You need to decide if a basic banking plan is going to be sufficient or do you have more advanced banking needs. The type of account that you need will largely be determined by the type of business that you have, the needs of sole proprietorship will be different from the needs of a corporation for example. You will also want to think about how you plan to do your banking, are you going to do most of it at the ATM or online or at the night deposit box? Or will you want to do most of your banking with a teller? These decisions will affect the cost of banking so should be given serious consideration.
The next step will be to determine how much banking you need to do, fees can be charged per transaction or on a monthly basis depending on how many transactions you make. You will need to have a good idea of how many transactions you will make in a month in order to make an informed decision. Things like how many checks you write each month and how frequently you make deposits will need to be kept in mind. It is usually a good idea to overestimate how many transactions you will make in a month. The size of the balance in your account will also affect your fees as well as your interest rate so you will need to have a good idea how much money will be kept in your account. Once you have all of this information you can go through the various account offerings and find the one that meets your needs.
In order to actually open the account you will need to visit the bank and show them a variety of documentation. The exact documents required will depend on the bank and the type of company you have but you will certainly be required to show proof that you are opening the account on behalf of a business. You will can also be sure that you will be required to provide a taxpayer identification number. If you own a business and it has a name you will need to open the account under that name, which means that you will need to provide a certified copy of the companies name certificate. Since you will be signing the checks and not the business you will also need to put your signature on file at the bank, as well as that of anybody else who is authorized to use the account. In order to do this you will need to provide two pieces of identification. There will likely be other documentation required as well, when you contact the bank to set up an appointment to open the account they should tell you what you need to bring.
