Does a Business Need a Separate Bank Account

pridehappy

If you are self-employed and just doing small payments for a very small business, I think it should be fine.

If you are an actual registered business with multiple people working for you, most banks have restrictions on their personal current accounts which means if they discover you are also using it for business, they might close your account(s). I'd play safe and operate a separate business current account, there are many out there from high street and online banks.

skycatcher

We setup a business account with Santander business when we started our small Mom and pop partnership in 2003. It works well keeping things separate from your personal stuff. It's free for us and makes doing our books nice and simple. BTW we are using quickfile which it also free for doing it books and invoicing.

eskbanker

pridehappy said:

If you are self-employed and just doing small payments for a very small business, I think it should be fine.

If you are an actual registered business with multiple people working for you, most banks have restrictions on their personal current accounts which means if they discover you are also using it for business, they might close your account(s). I'd play safe and operate a separate business current account, there are many out there from high street and online banks.

I'm not aware of any banks that formally differentiate in that way between self-employment and 'actual registered business' in their personal account terms, the only ones I've seen simply have a blanket exclusion of using such accounts for business purposes.  Granted, self-employment might be more likely to slip through the net, but in terms of the contractual clauses I don't believe there's a difference?

Zanderman

eskbanker said:

pridehappy said:

If you are self-employed and just doing small payments for a very small business, I think it should be fine.

If you are an actual registered business with multiple people working for you, most banks have restrictions on their personal current accounts which means if they discover you are also using it for business, they might close your account(s). I'd play safe and operate a separate business current account, there are many out there from high street and online banks.

I'm not aware of any banks that formally differentiate in that way between self-employment and 'actual registered business' in their personal account terms, the only ones I've seen simply have a blanket exclusion of using such accounts for business purposes.  Granted, self-employment might be more likely to slip through the net, but in terms of the contractual clauses I don't believe there's a difference?

Indeed, there is no such distinction. Occasional/casual self-employment may well slip through unnoticed, but anyone who's doing much more than that - which will be most I'd guess - has no reason to risk using a personal account when there are easy, and free, business accounts to be had.