I’ve changed my mind about small business banking.
One of the first things I did when I established CPA for Small Business, LLC was open a checking account at a bank that I considered “small business friendly”.
My definition of small business friendly is one that you can build a relationship with where your business banking officer knows you as well as understands your business. (Caveat, the business owner has to take the initiative to build the relationship)
A small business friendly bank will generally give you the benefit of the doubt because they have a relationship with you. They service their customers like the banks I dealt with when I started my professional career in the early 1990’s.Which means that there are loans that all banks will or won’t make, but a small business friendly bank will work with you if you are in the grey area because they have a personal relationship with you.
In August, my small business friendly bank sent out a notice that they were going to start charging $9.00 a month for checking and savings accounts unless you carried a significantly high average balance. Faced with paying $216 a year for services that were free for the prior four and a half years, I began to look at the banking alternatives for CPA for Small Business.
My wife Linda and I keep our personal checking and savings with Baxter Credit Union (BCU), a Chicagoland based credit union. Linda informed me that BCU had business accounts and upon investigation we discovered that BCU’s minimum balance for service charges was a lot lower than that of the bank we used, which would allow us to continue avoiding service charges on our bank accounts.
So in October, we moved CPA for Small Business checking and savings to Baxter Credit Union.
Since the move, we have been making deposits at The Tennessee Credit Union, a sister credit union located in Nashville.
Today, Linda pointed out to me that BCU was now allowing account holders to scan checks and make deposits at their home or office at no charge. BCU allows you to scan checks for deposits on your personal scanner as long as your scanner meets a set of minimum requirements (which most late model scanners do). This is a great service that most banks charge a monthly service charge for the ability to make remote deposits plus a fee per check deposited from your office. And unlike other bank’s remote deposit products, BCU doesn’t require you to purchase a scanner or software from them.
So you may want to see if you qualify for a credit union for your business banking needs. We’re very happy with our decision to move CPA for Small Business’s banking to a credit union.
