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."
1.  this is not the correct sub, try /r/Entrepreneurs or similar 2. Banks only care about 1 thing: collaterals with personal guarantee from the owners/shareholders of the business. Nothing else matters, don't waste your time with a business plan.  (Yes ELI: bank only give money to people who have money). I am assuming this is USA. While it is a bit of a pain, you are best off to have separate accounts for your business and personal.  This way, if it comes to audit, you hand the IRS statements for your business account(s) and they match your return.   As a further precaution I would have the card(s) you use for business expenses look different then the ones you use for personal so you don't mess another one up. "Technically it doesn't matter what size the check is. In fact, it doesn't even have to be written on paper. While writing it on a cow may not always fly, almost any object actually will. That said, more to the question asked - you can definitely use the smaller ""personal""-sized checks for a business account. The larger checks formatted to the ""letter"" page size: if you cut it into three equal pieces with a tiny bit left for the binder holes - you'll get exactly three check-sized pieces. This is convenient for those printing checks, keeping carbon-copy records etc. Regarding the MICR line: I just checked my business check book, which is of a smaller ""personal"" size (that I got for free from the bank) - the check number is at the end." 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. On a personal Loan Yes. On a business loan, it would depend on the Bank and they would like to understand the purpose of the loan and need it to be secured. They may not even grant such kind of business loan. "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." "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!" "Yes, kinda.   Talk to local banks about a business account, and tell them you want to enable certain employees to make deposits but not withdrawals.  They don't need to know you're all the same person.   For instance I have a PayPal account for business.  These allow you to create ""sub accounts"" for your employees with a variety of access privileges.  Of course I control the master account, but I also set up a ""sub account"" for myself.  That is the account I use every day." In my opinion, separating your money into separate accounts is a matter of personal preference. I can only think of two main reasons why people might suggest separating your bank accounts in this way: security and accounting. The security reasoning might go something like this: My employer has access to my bank account, because he direct deposits my salary into my account.  I don't want my employer to have access to all my money, so I'll have a separate account that my employer has access to, and once the salary is deposited, I can move that money into my real account. The fault in this reasoning is that a direct deposit setup doesn't really give your employer withdrawal access to your account, and your employer doesn't have any reason to pull money out of your account after he has paid you.  If fraud is going to happen, it much more likely to happen in the account that you are doing your spending out of. The other reason might be accounting.  Perhaps you have several bank accounts, and you use the different accounts to separate your money for different purposes.  For example, you might have a checking account that you do most of your monthly spending out of, you might have a savings account that you use to store your emergency fund, and you have more savings accounts to keep track of how much you have saved toward your next car, or your vacation, or your Christmas fund, or whatever.  After you get your salary deposited, you can move some into your spending account and some into your various savings accounts for different purposes. Instead of having many bank accounts, I find it easier to do my budgeting/accounting on my own, not relying on the bank accounts to tell me how much money I have allocated to each purpose.  I only have one checking account where my income goes; my own records keep track of how much money in that account is set aside for each purpose.  When the checking account balance gets too large, I move a chunk of it over to my one savings account, which earns a little more interest than the checking account does.  I can always move money back into my checking account if I need to spend it for some reason, and the amount of money in each of the two accounts is not directly related to the purpose of the money. In summary, I don't see a good reason for this type of general recommendation. I don't know if it's legal but your talking about arbitraging the rates between a personal savings account and a business account. I also don't know those rates but will venture to guess that they are not materially different, after taking into account the cost of setting up and registering an LLC, for it to be worth the time and effort. A checking account is one that permits the account holder to write demand drafts (checks), which can be given to other people as payment and processed by the banks to transfer those funds. (Think of a check as a non-electronic equivalent of a debit card transaction, if that makes more sense to you.) Outside of the ability to write checks, and the slightly lower interest rate usually offered to trade off against that convenience, there really is no significant difference between savings and checking accounts.  The software needs to be designed to handle checking accounts if it's to be sold in the US, since many of us do still use checks for some transactions. Adding support for other currencies doesn't change that. If you don't need the ability to track which checks have or haven't been fully processed, I'd suggest that you either simply ignore the checking account feature, or use this category separation in whatever manner makes sense for the way you want to manage your money. "For practical purposes, I would strongly suggest that you do create a separate account for each business you may have that is used only for business purposes, and use it for all of your business income and expenses. This will allow you to get an accurate picture of whether you are making money or not, what your full expenses really are, how much of your personal money you have put into the business, and is an easy way to keep business taxes separate. You will also be able to get a fairly quick read on what your profits are without doing much accounting by looking at the account balance less future taxes and expenses, and less any personal money you've put into the account. Check out this thread from Paypal about setting up a ""child"" account that is linked to your personal account and can be set up to autosweep payments into your main account, should you like. You will still be able to see transactions for each child account. NOTE: Do be careful to make sure you are reserving the proper amount out of any profits your startup may have for taxes - you don't want to mix this with personal money and then later find out that you owe taxes and have to scramble to come up with the money if you have already spent it This is one of the main reasons to segregate your startup's revenues and profits in the business account. For those using ""brick and mortar"" banking services rather than a service like Paypal: You likely do not need a business checking account if you are a startup. Most likely, you can simply open a second personal account with your bank in your name, and name it ""John Doe DBA Company Name"" (DBA = Doing Business As). This way, you can pay expenses and accept payments in the name of your startup. Check with your banker for additional details (localized information)." My wife and I have two Schwab brokerage accounts, one for retirement and one for non-retirement investments.  The latter also has a checking/savings account which we use as our main account.  Schwab is very happy with us, as we are cheapskates and save a lot of money.  The checking account, which seems to act like any ordinary checking account, gives us all the things listed above.  They pay the ATM fees, which is not a lot of money, but seems like a nice thing to me.  We can also do cash deposits and we can go to any Schwab branch to talk to someone face to face.  We've only had to do the latter once in 10 or so years, and the former maybe once or twice. Early on, one might not be able to get credit for their business. For convenience, and the card perks, it makes sense to use the personal card. But for sake of a clean paper trail, I'd choose 1 card and use it exclusively, 100% for the business. Not one card here, one card there. The best ask is the lowest ask, and the best bid is the highest bid.  If the ask was lower than the bid then they crossed, and that would be a crossed market and quickly resolved. So the bid will almost always be cheaper than the ask. A heuristic is that a bid is the revenue of the stock at any given time while the ask is the cost, so the market will only ever offer a profit to itself not to the liquidity seeker. If examining the book vertically, all orders are usually sorted descending. Since the best ask is the lowest ask, it is on the bottom of the asks, and vice versa for the best bid. The best bid & best ask will be those closest since that's the narrowest spread and price-time priority will promise that a bid that crosses the asks will hit the lowest ask, the best possible price for the bidder and vice versa for an ask that crosses the best bid.