Personal checks instead of business ones
I'll assume you are asking about a check for some kind of work or service that you provided them, that they hired your company to do. No large business will do that. In their records they have a contract with your company to provide services. If they write you a personal check it won't match with the contract, and when the auditors see that they will scream blue murder. Whoever wrote the check will have to prove that you are legitimately the same thing as the company (that doesn't mean taking your word for it). They may also have to show they weren't conspiring with you to commit tax fraud ( that wasn't your intention of course, was it?) .
"I expect the company wanted to pay you for a product (on a purchase order) rather than as  a contract laborer. Whatever. Would they be willing to re-issue the check to you as a sole proprietor of a business named ABC Consulting (or anything like that)? You can register your sole proprietor business with the state using a ""Doing Business As"" (DBA, or fictitious name), and then open the bank account for your business using the check provided by the customer as the first deposit. (There is likely a smaller registration fee for the DBA.) If they won't re-issue the check and you have to go the LLC route... Scrounge up $125 doing odd jobs or borrowing from a friend or parents. Seriously, anyone can earn that amount of money in a week or two. Besides the filing fee for the LLC, your bank may require you to provide an Operating Agreement (which is not required by the State). The Operating Agreement can be simple, or more complex if you have a partner (even if it's a spouse). If you do have a partner, it is essential to have such an agreement because it would specify the responsibilities and benefits allocated to each partner, particularly in the event of equity distributions (taking money out of the business, or liquidating and ending the LLC). There are websites that will provide you a boilerplate form for Operating Agreements. But if your business is anything more than just single member LLC, you should pay an attorney to draw one up for you so the wording is right. It's a safeguard against potential future lawsuits. And, while we're at it, don't forget to obtain a EIN (equivalent to a SSN) from the IRS for your LLC. There's no cost, but you'll have to have it to file taxes as a business for every year the LLC exists and has income. Good luck!" If you're a sole proprietor there's no reason to have a separate business account, as long as you keep adequate records, as you are one and the same for tax purposes. My husband and I already have 5 accounts and a mortgage with one bank. I don't see the need to open up yet another account.  As a contracted accountant, I don't need to write business checks, and my expenses are minimal. As long as I have an present my assumed business name certificate and ID, there's no reason for a bank not to deposit into my personal account. PocketSmith is another tool you might like to consider. No personal banking details are required, but you can upload your transactions in a variety of formats. Pocketsmith is interesting because it really focus on your future cash flow, and the main feature of the interface is around having a calendar(s) where you easily enter one off or repetitive expenses/income. http://www.pocketsmith.com/ You can't cash the check silly.  How can you go off on a rant when you can't even tell the difference between a real check and a promotional tool.  If you don't want to call in an get info throw it away....simple.  This thread made me laugh.  Thanks for that.  Good day. "I know of one practical difference between business checks (8"" check) and personal checks (6"" check) dealing with the paper check conversion rule to electronic debit.   The National ACH Association, created a rule that allows receivers of checks without an ""Auxiliary On-Us"" field, to convert your check into an electronic debit via the ACH network.  By default, 6"" checks (personal checks) do NOT have the AUX ON-US field, and are eligible to be converted to ACH debit. If you do not want your paper checks converted to ACH debits, then start using business checks with the AUX ON-US field populated.  You can use business checks for business or personal checking accounts. More information can be found below: http://www.deluxe.com/miscfiles/pdf/AuxOnUsField.pdf http://www.achrulesonline.org/" I'm going to give the checkmark to Joe, but I wanted to convey my personal experience. I bank with TD in New Jersey and was informed by the teller that I simply needed to endorse the check myself and indicate Parent of Minor. I cannot attest if other banks will accept this, but it at least works for TD and my situation in particular. While you can print that on the check, it isn't considered legally binding. If you are concerned about a check not being deposited in a timely manner, consider purchasing a cashier's check instead. This doesn't solve the problem per se, but it transfers responsibility of tracking that check from you to the bank. I feel the change should not be to remove the stigma from personal default. It should be to add it, in very large amounts, to corporate default. Every member of a defaulting corporation should be ashamed to be seen in public. The have let their culture down and should be mortified.  So if you defaulted on your mortgage, yeah, that's not great. If you're Donald Trump, that filed 11 a couple times, he can go fuck himself. It's not the legitimate checks or bounced checks that are the problem, it's phony checks issued against real accounts with actual money in them.  All the security measures on the check don't amount to crap if someone can print up some legitimate looking checks with bogus amounts on them, or even just steal some printed checks and sign something resembling the authorized signature. I don't know, ask the various companies I'm forced to do business with why in the hell they want me to stop by their office so I can drop a check off vs just using some means of digital payment.  I would fucking LOVE to ditch paper checks. "To put a positive spin on the whole thing, maybe it's a small family shop, and having the check made out to ""cash"" means that your barber can hand it to someone else without the need to countersign. Or maybe his last name is ""Cash"" - there was a pretty famous singer who fit that description. Either way, it's not your place to nanny his finances." As I replied to someone else who said that:  I'm often having to send stuff with the check. Paperwork, a bill etc. While that would work to a person who knows me, it's usually not going to work with a business or government who needs to know why I'm sending this check. No, most check deposits are processed that way. Banks transmit the pictures of the checks between themselves, and allow business customers to deposit scans for quite some time now. I see no reason for you to be concerned of a check being in a dusty drawer, it's been deposited, cannot be deposited again. If you're concerned of forgery - well, nothing new there. "A.1 and B.1 are properly balanced, but ""Business Expense"" is an expense, not an asset. The T entries should be timestamped.  The time should be equal to the time on the credit card receipts.  This will make audit and balancing easier. A or B can be used, but if the the business is to be reimbursed for personal expenses, the accounts should be renamed to reflect that fact. More explicit account names could be ""Business expense - stationary"" and ""Personal expense - lunch"" or even better ""Personal expense - cammil - lunch"".  With a consistent format, the account names can be computer parsed for higher resolution and organization, but when tallying these high resolution accounts, debits & credits should always be used. When it comes time to collect from employees, only accounts with ""Personal expense"" need be referenced.  When it comes time to collect from ""cammil"", only net accounts of ""Personal expense - cammil"" need be referenced. An example of higher resolution, to determine what ""cammil"" owes, would be to copy the main books, reverse any account beginning with ""Personal expense - cammil"", and then take the balance.  Using the entries in the question as an example, here's the account to determine ""cammil""'s balance: Now, after all such balancing entries are performed, the net credit ""Personal expense - cammil"" is what ""cammil"" owes to the business. The scheme for account names should be from left to right, general to specific." "Checks sold as ""business checks"" are larger than checks sold as ""personal checks"". Personal checks are usually 6"" x 2 1/2"" while business checks are 8 1/2 "" x 3 to 4 "". Also, business checks typically have a tear-off stub where you can write who the check was made out to and what it was for. In this computer age that seems pretty obsolete to me, I enter the check into the computer, not write it on a stub, but I suppose there are still very small businesses out there that doesn't use a computerized record-keeping system. These days business checks are often printed on 8 1/2 by 11"" paper -- either one per sheet with a big tear-off or 3 per sheet with no tear off -- so you can feed them through a computer printer easily. Nothing requires you to use ""business checks"" for a business account. At least, I've always used personal checks for my business account with no problem. These days I make almost all payments electronically, I think I write like one paper check a year, so it's become a trivial issue. Oh, and I've never had any problem getting a check printer to put my business name on the checks or anything like that."