My second location opened last Friday, same LLC, different name on the building.
Our company policy has been we accept checks, but only to our parent LLC name.
I go back to balance the register after the first weekend, and there are 20-30 checks with a name on them that i cannot cash.
I could file a new DBA (which is not required by law in my state) get government approval, get a new DBA set up with my bank. But seeing as this is probably a once in a blue moon event, i would rather not.
Does anyone know if i can take company checks to one of those check cashing places instead?
If there’s a different name on the building, this is unlikely to be the only time it happens. I would strongly suggest getting that name and address registered under your business license number. If anything goes wrong, as it now stands, your insurance company would likely get away with refusing to cover anything that happened at that location.
I don’t know what your business is, but as a professional, if I’m buying something, I’m checking to see that the name, payee account, and business license name match. If you ever do business with commercial entities, this will cost you a big contract some day.
I dunno where you are, but it is $35 to register a fictitious name in Ohio. I doubt that it is all that much greater elsewhere. Renewal here is every 5 years.
Unless it is a respectable amount, I would suggest just filing the DBA, then you have ti for the next time this comes up.
If the name is anything similar to your actual business name, then the bank will probably take the checks anyway. I had people take some interesting liberties with my business name when writing checks until I got a stamp.
Speaking of which, have you considered getting a stamp? Saves quite a bit of time at checkout for the people who still use checks, and makes sure that they get your name right.
He’s saying that the name on the checks is so different that the bank won’t accept them for deposit. I.e., the account is under “Unicorn Riot LLC,” and the checks are made out to “West Side Unicorn.” The bank can’t verify that the checks actually belong to his business.
He’s wondering if a check-cashing shop would be more lenient and let him just cash them. This is just a guess, but my suspicion is that such places only cash checks made out to individuals.
(Indeed, I don’t think the bank is supposed to cash checks made out to a company either. When I was a bank teller long ago, even if it was a sole proprietor whom we all knew, we were supposed to take the check for deposit and make him write a new check to himself as an individual.)
It’s just “company policy” preventing this – he doesn’t indicate that he has even tried to deposit them at the bank.
My experience is that tellers don’t even look much at the name on the check, especially if it’s being deposited (not cashed) in a commercial account. Just stick those checks in the middle of a bunch of others written out to the account name & deposit them. I bet you’ll have no problem.
Then go and get that name added as a DBA name for your company, as suggested above.
In most states you’re sorta stuck until you can make the alternate name official. The good news is that in many states that’s real quick & real easy.
In many states you can file a DBA online for a few dollars and get a printable PDF certificate back a few seconds later. Take that to your bank along with proof of your connection to the existing account, have them update the account, then deposit the checks.
As long as you have the other name on the door of your store, you’re going to be getting checks written to that name. Best to fix that permanently with a proper name registration.
In some states the term for a second name for the same underlying entity is a “fictitious name” or, cleverly, a “second name”. Spend a couple minutes on the phone with the relevant state agency and they can clarify exactly which flavor of name registration you need. You definitely do not want to go through the time consuming process of creating a new LLC; you just need this one to have a new official “alias”.
ETA: Congrats on doubling your business. That’s gotta feel good, hiccups and all. The hardest jump is from one to two locations. Soon you’ll be giving Walmart a run for it’s money.
Maybe it’s just my bank that’s a stickler about this … the business name has to be word-for-word … and if it’s in my own name I have to endorse to the business …
DBA is required here, although we call it ABN, and the State never used to care how many one person held …
Are both locations under different names? … maybe just open another checking account for the second store … shore would make the accountin’ easier …
I guess that’s a possible interpretation, but I’m hard-pressed to imagine a company policy that forbids deposit at a bank but permits use of a check-cashing place, or why the OP would ask strangers to opine about what’s permitted by his own company policy.
Moreover, if it’s his business and all that’s at stake is company policy, why not just waive the policy? Or add something to the policy to deal with this situation? The question to me seems to presuppose an external impediment.
Clearly, as a result of company policy he’s never tried to cash a cheque with the ‘wrong’ name on it.
Around here, I could deposit (not cash!) a cheque with an only vaguely related name on it if it was a business account, being handled by a business branch. They aren’t worried about depositing a wrong cheque into a wrong account, because they know that when it’s reversed, they are going to be collecting ~$60 in reversal fees. If a business wants to do that, they don’t mind.
I’ve never had issue depositing checks written to the wrong name. Customers sometimes write checks to my name, my company, or a company I sometimes cover for. All get deposited without issue.
If you insist on cashing the checks you’ll continue to have issues without registering a DBA.
Before I set up a proper business checking account with my official business name (which I assume involved a DBA somewhere in there, but I don’t remember), I’d get some checks made out to my business name instead of my personal name. I found out that if I just put 'em in the ATM, nobody gave a shit and they went through just fine. If I used a human teller, they’d kick it back to me. So that’s one possible solution. No guarantees, but I’ve never had an issue with it. I generally found that pretty much anything you stuck in the ATM was not very closely scrutinized. I even deposited a WAY expired check that I discovered in my closet (like over a year expired) and it went through just fine. (I did get a ring from the company that issued the check, though, to make sure it was me who deposited it, and who also idly wondered how and why in the hell it went through. I told them, “ATM.”)
I stopped accepting checks years ago, but when I did, I often had people screw up the “To” line. Say my business is “kayaker’s place”, I’d have people write their check to “bob’s place”, a company down the road. Those checks were always deposited with the rest and always went through smoothly.
