Why should I choose a business checking account instead of a personal account?
"Some benefits of having a business checking account (versus a personal checking account) are: The first 3 should be pretty easy to determine if they are important to you. #4 is a little more abstract, though I see you have an LLC taxed as a sole proprietorship, and so I'm guessing protecting your personal assets may have been one of the driving reasons you formed the LLC in the first place. If so, ""following through"" with the business account is advised."
"It's a scam.  Here are the many signs: The bank will never ask for your password. They can access your account without it.  The bank will never use a customer's account for their own business. They have their own accounts.  ""Some guy"" is not a bank employee. Bank employees are people that you meet at the bank.  Banks do not hand out thousands of dollars for free to customers, especially customers with nothing in their accounts.  Even if you have no money in the account, this crook that you would give access to your account can do lots of illegal things in your name, such as writing bad checks, laundering money, running scams on other people through your account, etc. If you have already given your account info to this person, you need to go to the bank immediately and inform them. Since you have no money in the account, you should close it." I just tried doing that on my PP which is in the Netherlands, I have added a USD bank account (from my dutch bank) and they sent the verification amount in Euros, I called the bank and wonder why they didn't let me choose account currency they said it's not possible and if I cashout Dollars that I have in my PP (cause we usually do international business so we set it to dollars) it will be changed to Euros, So we decided to keep the dollars in account to pay our bills instead of getting ripped off by PayPal in xchange rates. First, if you live in/around a reasonably populated urban area, and you're in the United States, I can't see why you would choose to bank with Chase, B of A, or another large commercial bank. I think you would be much better served by banking at a reasonably large credit union. There are many differences between banks and credit unions, but in a nutshell, credit unions are owned by the members, and operate primarily to provide benefits to their members, whereas a bank is owned by the shareholders, and operates primarily to make profits for the shareholders (not to benefit the customers). The banking industry absolutely hates the credit unions, so if you've ever been nickeled-and-dimed with this fee and that charge by your bank, I have to ask why you're still banking with a company that irritates you and/or actively tries to screw you out of your money? I live in California, and I've banked at credit unions almost exclusively since I started working nearly 30 years ago. Every time I've strayed and started banking at a for-profit bank, I've regretted it. For example, a few years ago I opened a checking account at a now-defunct bank (WaMu) just for online use: eBay and so forth. It was a free checking account. When Chase bought WaMu, the account became a Chase account, and it seemed that every other statement brought new fees, new restrictions, and so forth. I finally closed it when they imposed some stupid fee for not carrying enough of a balance. I found out by logging in to their Web site and seeing a balance of zero dollars; they had imposed the fee a few statements back, and I had missed it, so they kept debiting my account until it was empty. At this point, I do about 90% of my banking at a fairly large credit union. I have a mortgage with a big bank, but that was out of my hands, as the lender/originator sold the mortgage and I had no say in the matter. My credit union has a highly functional Web site, permits me to download my account activity to Quicken, and even has mobile apps which allow me to deposit a check by taking a picture of it, or check my account activity, etc. They (my credit union) are part of a network of other credit unions, so as long as I am using a network ATM, I never pay a fee. In sum, I can't see any reason to go with a bank. Regarding checks, I write a small number of checks per year, but I recently needed to reorder them. My credit union refers members directly to Harland-Clarke, a major-league player in the check printing business. Four boxes of security checks was around $130 plus shipping, which is not small money. However, I was able to order the very same checks via Costco for less than half that amount. Costco refers members to a check printing service, which is a front/subsidiary of Harland-Clarke, and using a promo code, plus the discount given for my Costco membership, I got four boxes of security checks shipped to me for less than $54. My advice would be to look around. If you're a Costco member, use their check printing service. Wal*mart offers a similar service to anyone, as does Sam's Club, and you can search around to find other similar services. Bottom line, if you order your checks via your bank or credit union, chances are you will pay full retail. Shop around, and save a bit. I've not opened a new account at a credit union in some time, but I would not be surprised if a credit union offered a free box of checks when you open a new account with them. "This is not an end-all answer but it'll get you started I have been through accounting courses in college as well as worked as a contractor (files as sole proprietor) for a few years but IANAA (I am not an accountant). Following @MasonWheeler's answer, if you're making that much money you should hire a bean counter to at least overlook your bookkeeping. What type of business? First, if you're the sole owner of the business you will most likely file as a sole proprietorship. If you don't have an official business entity, you should get it registered officially asap, and file under that name. The problem with sole proprietorships is liability. If you get sued, not only are your business' assets vulnerable but they can go after your personal assets too (including house/cars/etc). Legally, you and your business are considered one and the same. To avoid liability issues, you could setup a S corporation. Basically, the business is considered it's own entity and legal matters can only take as much as the business owns. You gain more protection but if you don't explicitly keep your business finances separate from your personal finances, you can get into a lot of trouble. Also, corporations generally pay out more in taxes. Technically, since the business is it's own entity you'll need to pay yourself a 'reasonable salary'. If you skip the salary and pay yourself the profits directly (ie evade being taxed on income/salary) the IRS will shut you down (that's one of the leading causes of corporations being shut down). You can also pay distribute bonuses on top of that but it would be wise to burn the words 'within reason' into your memory first. The tax man gets mad if you short him on payroll taxes.  S corporations are complicated, if you go that route definitely seek help from an accountant. Bookkeeping If you're not willing to pay a full time accountant you'll need to do a lot of studying about how this works. Generally, even if you have a sole proprietorship it's best to have a separate bank account for all of your business transactions. Every source/drain of money will fall into one of 3 categories... Assets - What your business owns: Assets can be categorized by liquidity. Meaning how fast you can transform them directly into cash. Just because a company is worth a lot doesn't necessarily mean it has a lot of cash. Some assets depreciate (lose value over time) whereas some are very hard to transform back into cash based on the value and/or market fluctuations (like property). Liabilities - What you owe others and what others owe you: Everything you owe and everything that is owed to you gets tracked. Just like credit cards, it's completely possible to owe more than you own as long as you can pay the interest to maintain the loans. Equity - the net worth of the company: The approach they commonly teach in schools is called double-entry bookkeeping where they use the equation: In practice I prefer the following because it makes more sense: Basically, if you account for everything correctly both sides of the equation should match up. If you choose to go the sole proprietorship route, it's smart to track everything I've mentioned above but you can choose to keep things simple by just looking at your Equity. Equity, the heart of your business... Basically, every transaction you make having to do with your business can be simplified down to debits (money/value) increasing and credits (money/value) decreasing. For a very simple company you can assess this by looking at net profits. Which can be calculated with: Revenues, are made up of money earned by services performed and goods sold. Expenses are made up of operating costs, materials, payroll, consumables, interest on liabilities, etc. Basically, if you brought in 250K but it cost you 100K to make that happen, you've made 150K for the year in profit. So, for your taxes you can count up all the money you've made (Revenues), subtract all of the money you've paid out (Expenses) and you'll know how much profit you've made. The profit is what you pay taxes on. The kicker is, there are gray areas when it comes to deducting expenses. For instance, you can deduct the expense of using your car for business but you need to keep a log and can only expense the miles you traveled explicitly for business. Same goes for deducting dedicated workspaces in your house. Basically, do the research if you're not 100% sure about a deduction. If you don't keep detailed books and try to expense stuff without proof, you can get in trouble if the IRS comes knocking. There are always mythical stories about 'that one guy' who wrote off his boat on his taxes but in reality, you can go to jail for tax fraud if you do that. It comes down to this. At the end of the year, if your business took in a ton of money you'll owe a lot in taxes. The better you can justify your expenses, the more you can reduce that debt. One last thing. You'll also have to pay your personal federal/state taxes (including self-employment tax). That means medicare/social security, etc. If this is your first foray into self-employment you're probably not familiar with the fact that 1099 employers pick up 1/2 of the 15% medicare/social security bill. Typically, if you have an idea of what you make annually, you should be paying this out throughout the year. My pay as a contractor was always erratic so I usually paid it out once/twice a year. It's better to pay too much than too little because the gov't will give you back the money you overpaid. At the end of the day, paying taxed sucks more if you're self-employed but it balances out because you can make a lot more money. If as you said, you've broken six figures, hire a damn accountant/adviser to help you out and start reading. When people say, ""a business degree will help you advance in any field,"" it's subjects like accounting are core requirements to become a business undergrad. If you don't have time for more school and don't want to pay somebody else to take care of it, there's plenty of written material to learn it on your own. It's not rocket surgery, just basic arithmetic and a lot of business jargon (ie almost as much as technology)." "Do not use a shared bank account.  One of you can cash/deposit the check in your personal account and then either pay the others in the group cash or write them a check.  You open yourself up to many, many problems sharing a bank account and/or money.  Treat it like a business as far as income goes, but I would not recommend any type of formal business, LLC, partnership, sole proprietorship, etc. For federal taxes, you just keep track of how much ""you"" personally are paid and report that at the end of the year as income, most likely on a 1040EZ 1040SE, along with any other income you have." The bank won't let you because: Differences in required account features — Business accounts have different features (many of them legal features) that are required by businesses. For instances: Do you want to be able to deposit cheques that are written out to your business name? You need a business account for that. Your business could be sold. Then it wouldn't be your business, so it wouldn't make sense to put the business account under your personal name. The bank account and the cash it holds is a business asset and should be owned by the business, so when the business is sold the account goes with it. This is especially the case for a corporation that has shareholders, and not a sole proprietorship. For a business, you could also, in theory, assign other people as signing authorities on the business account (e.g. your corporate treasurer), and the individuals performing that role could change over time. Business accounts allow for this kind of use. Market segmentation — The bank has consciously undertaken to segment their product offerings in order to maximize their profit. Market segmentation helps the bottom line. Even if there were zero legal reasons to have separate personal vs. business accounts, banks would still make it their policy to sell different account types according to use because they can make more money that way. Consider an example in another industry: The plain-old telephone company also practices segmentation w.r.t. personal/business. Do you want a telephone line for a business and listed as such in the phone book? You need a business line. Do you want a phone line hooked up at a non-residential address? You need a business line. Here it's clear it is less of a legal issue than with the bank account, and it doesn't matter that the technical features of the phone line may be identical for the basic product offerings within each segment. The phone company has chosen to segment and price their product offerings this way. Q. Why do companies choose to charge some kinds of customers more than others for essentially the same underlying service? A. Because they can. "There are basically two approaches, based on how detailed you want to be in your own personal accounting: Obviously the more like a business or like ""real"" accounting you want to be, the more complex you can make it, but in general I find that the purpose of personal accounting is (1) to track what I own, and (2) to ensure I have documented anything I need to for tax purposes, and as long as you're meeting those goals any reasonable approach is workable." "As i see it, with a debit card, they   are taken kinda out of the game. They   are not lending money, it seems really   bad for them. Not exactly. It is true that they're not lending money, but they charge a hefty commission from the retailers for each swipe which is pure profit with almost no risk. One of the proposals considered (or maybe approved already, don't know) in Congress is to cap that hefty commission, which will really make the debit cards merely a service for the checking account holder, rather than a profit maker for the bank. On the other hand, it's   definitely good for individuals. I disagree with that. Debit cards are easier to use than checks, but they provide much less protection than credit cards. Here's what I had to say on this a while ago, and seems like the community agrees. But, why do we really need a credit   history to buy some of the more   expensive stuff Because the system is broken. It rewards people in debt by giving them more opportunities to get into even more debts, while people who owe nothing to noone cannot get a credit when they do need one. With the current system the potential creditor can only asses the risk of someone who has debt already, they have no way of assessing risks of someone with no debts. To me, all this credit card system   seems like an awfully nice way to make   loads of money, backed by governments   as well. Well, credit cards have nothing to do with it. It's the credit scores system that is broken. If we replace the ""card"" with ""score"" in your question - then yes, you're thinking correctly. That of course is true for the US, in other countries I have no knowledge on how the creditors assess the risks."