u/Dense_Preparation594

I'm realizing that online banking for small businesses means very different things depending on the bank. For my contracting firm, managing all the details surrounding payments takes the bulk of my time. I need to separate the payroll and business operating funds, reserve cash for quarterly tax payments, provide my office manager with limited access and review purchase activity on each credit card. My bank can do all of that but its cumbersome. I have to transfer money between accounts, request and download reports from the bank and so on. Id like to learn more about small business bank accounts but almost all comparisons are discussing fees and interest rates. I'd like to hear from business owners what banking features they have found to be time saving.

Actual reconciliation takes me an afternoon but I can't start until the last client sends their bank statements, that part can drag on for days, even an entire week. The problem is every client is a different bank or portal requiring different logins. I pull what I need when clients grant me access. But for the rest I am constantly texting for PDFs and getting half statements, or the wrong month, or I'll send it later today then nothing for four days. One client just refuses to give bank access at all, so every month I wait on them to remember to export something that would take me 30 seconds if I could just log in myself. Sending reminder emails or creating a shared folder or checklist with due dates don't work. Basically I'm a collections agent for documents the first week of every month. time I could have spent doing the work I get paid to do! How do the rest of you handle the access problem? Do you require read only access during onboarding? Or are we all chasing statements at month end?