Banking Tips for New Business Owners
Whether you're looking to set up new business bank accounts or grow and manage your business's back office and mitigate fraud, we've got some tips and tricks to help. Find everything you need to know right here!
What Do You Need to Open a Business Bank Account
Opening a business checking account allows you to deposit funds, process payroll, pay for expenses by check, and much more. Typically, opening a business checking account requires:
- Your EIN or SSN
- The legal name of your business
- Your business' DBA (doing business as) name, if it's different from the legal name
- Two sets of documentation:
- Legal formation verification including:
- A copy of your business license or business license number
- Print out from the Secretary of State verifying active status of your business
- Formation documents such as:
- Articles of Incorporation
- Operating Agreement
- Articles of Organization
- Meeting Minutes
What Documents Are Required to Open a Business Savings Account
A business savings account helps separate your daily operating expenses from funds you'd like to use in the future. Depending on the account you choose, you could also earn interest, which can be invested back into your business. The requirements for opening a business savings account are the same as those for a business checking account (listed above). Check with your bank to learn more.
How to Step Up Your Small Business Growth
You probably started your small business because you're passionate about what you create and provide to your customers. Growing your small business's customer base is always a focus, although how you do that might be secondary to your operations. Still, you can choose from several ways to reach out to your existing customers and get your business in front of potential customers.
| Focus on the Customers You Have | When most owners or managers think about marketing their business, they often turn efforts toward reaching new customers. However, this is often significantly more work than focusing on the spending habits of existing customers. The barrier to getting someone new to visit your store or website (let alone make a purchase) is much higher than getting your current customers to purchase or use more of your business's products or services. |
| Look at Your Data and Customer Base | How much do you know about your customer base? Information like email, age, gender, profession, and preferred shopping time and day can be aggregated to give you a picture of the customer buying from you. It will be invaluable as you identify where to advertise and determine any critical shopping times or days you can capitalize on. |
| Loyalty Cards | Implement a customer ID process so you can track buying habits. When customers use loyalty cards to get discounts on specific items or earn points, you can track how much they’re spending and on what. You’ll know exactly who your customer is, what they like to buy, and when they shop. |
| Outline a Plan to Build Awareness and Trust | Your efforts don't have to be complicated, just consistent. Repeat messaging over time so potential customers learn what your business can do for them. While you do this, make sure current customers are kept informed of news about your company and communicate sales and other benefits they can take advantage of. See what's most important or meaningful to your customer base and participate in different ways, such as donating a percentage of sales of a particular item to a local nonprofit. |
| Host a Giveaway | Use the information you gather to reach out to your customers later and determine where you may want to advertise. If your customers can purchase online, make these fields required during sign-up. Review your state's marketing regulations before starting any new marketing campaigns, as some states have laws about how businesses can use customer information for marketing or sales purposes. This includes laws related to giveaways or sweepstakes and how those are defined. |
| Maintain Social Media Accounts | Feature specials via free posts on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, or create targeted ads that will appear to your most likely shoppers. Unlike traditional advertising, social media ads have the capability to allow you to specify education level, zip code, age, and more. Get creative with organic and paid posts! |
| Establish and Consistently Improve Your Methods | Getting new customers requires a lot of effort, so the last thing you want is to lose them because of inefficient procedures or a clunky checkout process. Take advantage of what is available to you and modify or replace your processes as needs arise. |
| Invest in Upgrades | As your business grows, your needs and those of your customers will change, along with improvements in technology. For example, if your checkout terminal is slow or temperamental, it negatively affects your employees and customers, so it's worth upgrading. Less time dealing with outdated technology means more time for productivity and helping customers! |
| Form Strategic Partnerships | To reach more customers, forge an alliance with a complementary business. This might involve cross-promoting in both of your businesses, giving referrals to each other, or even setting aside a small amount of space dedicated to the other's products or services. Find a business that would work well with yours, build a strong relationship with it, and help each other succeed. |
| Measure What Works and Refine | There is no one-size-fits-all plan, so pay attention to the results you're getting and whether it's worth your time and resources to continue it. Over time, your customers' needs and habits will change, so staying on top of changing demands and adapting your business strategy regularly to those demands is essential. |
Business Cybersecurity Tips and Best Practices
Data breaches aren't fun to consider as a business owner, but they're becoming an increasingly common risk. According to Forbes, 43% of all data breaches affect small and medium-sized companies, so there's a good chance yours might be hit at some point. How can you protect your customers' data AND your business? Here are a few tips to better protect your business and reduce risk.
- Know the implications of a breach (60% of businesses close their doors within six months of a cyber attack)
- Hold a cybersecurity audit to see where you can improve
- Create an employee training plan so staff know what to do when (not if) a breach occurs
- Audit employee access to everything about your business (accounts, network, locations, etc.)
- Strengthen your passwords
- Lock down your business online banking by assigning permissions and auditing access
- Keep your devices up to date; the latest security patches are useless if they aren't installed
- Provide firewall security for your internet connection
- Consider cyber liability insurance and check your policy to make sure you'd be covered
How Does WaFd Bank Help Small Businesses?
At WaFd Bank, we've been a small business bank for more than 100 years. We think we're pretty good at helping businesses thrive. We believe in a common-sense, local approach to doing business, which can be a differentiating factor when it comes to small business lending. At WaFd Bank, our team makes all loan approvals and lending decisions. We like to keep the loans we make on our own books, including lines of credit and small business loans. Because decisions are made this way, we can get creative to meet the needs of our community.
How does this make us one of the best banks for small business startup loans? We offer a variety of products and tools to help you get your business off the ground or to the next level, including business term loans, lines of credit, merchant services with low transaction fees, cashflow management tools, the ability to process remote check deposit, and checking and savings accounts with low monthly maintenance fees.
What Types of Business Services and Accounts Does WaFd Bank Offer?
- Small Business Savings: WaFd Bank's flexible, competitive accounts can help you save for a rainy day, a second location, or a business improvement. These accounts include:
- Business Money Market Account: just $100 to open and no monthly maintenance fee if you keep a $1,000 balance ($12 a month if the balance falls below $1,000)
- Business Savings: only $25 to open and no monthly maintenance fee if you keep a $200 balance ($5 per month if the balance falls below $200)
- Business CDs: terms vary from 14 days to 5 years
- Small Business Checking: Hard-working checking account options help you manage your business better, faster, and easier. All small business checking accounts require at least $100 to open an account. Options include:
- Free Business Checking: Designed for businesses with lower monthly transactions and maintaining lower balances nonsufficient funds charge may apply
- Business Interest Checking: This interest-bearing Business Checking Account is the right fit for clients with moderate activity and balances the monthly service fee is $15 per month if the balance falls below $5,000
- Business Analyzed Checking: Analyzed Checking provides flexibility and control; design a package tailored to your business with the services you need the monthly service fee is based on transaction volume, use your account balance to offset fees
- Small Business Online Banking with WaFd Treasury Prime: From online and mobile banking to remote deposits, we offer a wealth of Treasury Management services for your convenience. Features of WaFd Treasury Prime include dynamic online functionality, such as available account balances, placing stop payments, viewing check images, user administration, and both previous and current-day transaction activity.
- Send payments using ACH, wire, account transfers, check printing, and Bill Pay; our consolidated payments feature allows you to send all your payments in one convenient file
- Sending information can be as easy or complex as you need it to be; you can send files using FTP, SFTP, or WaFd Desktop Delivery and reports and account history are sent to your email every night through scheduled delivery
- Self-guided mapping tools remove the technical support from importing files
- Flexible reporting allows you to export the reports you need and in the format you need
- Audit reporting tools are available to review and download on demand or regularly to help you mitigate risk
- WAFD Treasury Express: This provides a simplified approach to online account management and treasury. Through this user-friendly platform, you can:
- Create & manage sub-users and set sub-user limitations
- Check account balances and activity
- Place stop payments
- Transfer funds between accounts
- View cleared check images
- Access eStatements
- Pay bills with small business bill pay
- Make deposits
- Access payment origination; ask about ACH and wire features, as some limitations apply
Business Services to Solve Back Office Pain Points
| What You're Looking For | WaFd Bank Business Service Solution |
|---|---|
| Simplify payroll processing, applicant processing, and other HR services | HR and Payroll Services |
| The ability to accept payments from clients, whether that's online, in person, or out and about | Payment Processing Services |
| Get your invoices paid in hours, not weeks | CollectEarly® |
| Open cash flow to seize growth opportunities, consolidate activity to see it all in one place, and better plan and project future business | Cash Flow Management |
| A way to easily monitor and manage sales and inventory | Point of Sale and Inventory Systems |
| Set up customized loyalty and gift card programs for customers to increase repeat business | Customer Engagement Services |
| Get better insights into your business' finances, simplify back-office processes, and reduce FTE | Accounting Automation |
| Offer your employees perks and benefits to attract and retain talent | WaFd Bank Work Perks |
| Stop fraud on your business accounts | ACH Positive Pay and Check Positive Pay |
WaFd Bank is Here to Help
Whether your small business is looking for a better way to pay employees, deposit checks, or finance an expansion, our local business bankers have the community knowledge and business experience to help. Find out why we were awarded Best Bank multiple years in a row and find your local WaFd Bank branch to learn more, or open a business bank account online today!
All loans subject to credit approval.
