The digital banking platform Found is an excellent business checking option for freelancers, self-employed individuals, and sole proprietors looking for affordable digital banking solutions. Aside from having $0 monthly service fees, Found offers useful features, such as free built-in bookkeeping tools, invoicing software, and tax tools, that can help any business owner save time and money on business paperwork.
It doesn’t do credit checks, which makes the platform accessible to any type of business owner. Although it offers a wide range of business tools, it lacks brick-and-mortar branches. Found’s core features are free, and there’s also a paid product, Found Plus.
Found’s core features are free. Found also offers an optional paid product, Found Plus for $19.99 / month or $149.99 / year. Advanced, optional add-on bookkeeping software available with a Found Plus subscription. There are no monthly account maintenance fees, but transactional fees for wires, instant transfers, and ATM apply. Read more at found.com/legal/fee_schedule
Pros
- No required monthly fees, minimum balance requirement, and initial deposit requirement
- No credit checks
- Free bookkeeping software
Cons
- Interest earning only through paid-tier Found Plus
- Cannot purchase checks or issue them from the app
- Low cash and check deposit limits
Features
- Free business debit Mastercard that allows expense tracking
- Debit cards can be frozen in the Found app
- Desktop and mobile apps
- Connect to accounting software and payment apps, such as Cash App, PayPal, Square, Venmo, and eBay
- Integrated bookkeeping allows expense categorization, invoice customization, receipt capture, and custom rule setting
- Track tax write-offs in the app
- View tax estimate update in real time
- Pay taxes directly from the app (for Schedule C filers only)
- Send Schedule C directly from the app
- Allows cash deposits at over 79,000 retail locations
- Check deposits available for eligible users
- Free automated clearing house (ACH) transfers
How Found Stacks Up With Its Competitors
|  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Monthly Fee | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Detailed Expense Tracking | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
Built-in Bookkeeping | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
Tax Tools | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
Personalized Invoicing | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ |
For a detailed comparison of features between these providers, check our guides:
When Found Is a Good Fit
- You are comfortable with banking exclusively online: Found is among the providers listed in our roundup of the best online business banks. While it lacks brick-and-mortar branches, it still lets you move money through debit card transactions, bank transfers, and payment apps like CashApp, PayPal, and Venmo.
- You want to bank without monthly fees: The Found business checking account does not have monthly fees, minimum opening deposit requirements, or minimum balance requirements, which is one of the reasons it made our list of top-recommended free business checking accounts. These low fees make it suitable for self-employed professionals, freelancers, and sole proprietors.
- You don’t have a good credit history: Found will let you open an account without performing a credit check.
- You want a bank that can help you keep track of your expenses: In our roundup of the leading banks for self-employed individuals, we named Found the best provider for detailed expense tracking. Whenever you make transactions with your Found debit card, Found automatically tracks and categorizes the expense. It uses your banking history to create detailed expense, income, profit, and loss reports in real time.
- You want a platform that can help you stay on top of your taxes: The Found business checking account offers expense management and tax planning tools, helping you categorize expenses and track tax write-offs for more savings. This is one of the reasons Found is one of our top small business checking accounts.
When To Consider Found Alternatives
- You use wire transfers regularly: Found charges a fee of $15 for outgoing wire transfers. The best provider for affordable wire transfers is Mercury, which charges zero wire transfer fees. Read our review of Mercury business checking for more information.
- You need access to a full range of banking products: The only banking product Found offers is business checking. If you’re looking for an online provider with a complete business banking product selection, consider First Internet Bank, which offers business checking, savings accounts, money market accounts, CDs, and lending products. Our First Internet Bank business checking review discusses these products in depth.
- You want to earn interest on checking deposits: The Found business checking account does not earn interest. The best provider for high annual percentage yield (APY) is Bluevine, which earns 1.5% APY on qualifying balances up to $250,000 for Standard Checking accounts. To learn more about how to qualify for Bluevine’s APY, see our review of Bluevine business checking.
If your small business meets one or more of these scenarios, check out our guide to the best small business checking accounts for additional recommendations.
Found Business Checking Overview
Found Business Checking Requirements
You can visit the provider’s website to open a business checking account. Part of the Found business checking account requirements is that business applicants provide the following information:
- Your legal name
- Your address
- Your Social Security number
- Your date of birth
- An estimate of how much you expect your business to earn within the year
- Your tax filing situation
- Additional details about your tax situation.
Found does not require a self-employed individual or freelancer to provide information on any kind of business structure when applying for an account, but if you have a limited liability company (LLC), you can add your employer identification number (EIN) once you sign up.
Certain types of businesses are prohibited from opening an account. See Found’s list of prohibited businesses for more information.
Found Business Checking Features
Business Debit Card
All accounts come with a business debit Mastercard, which provides easy tracking of expenses and payments. You can also freeze your card for security in the Found app. In addition, you can connect Found to useful business platforms, such as Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, and Etsy.
Account Funding Options
Users can transfer funds into their accounts through
- Direct deposits
- Wire transfers
- Square or Stripe payment processors
- Payment apps (Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal)
- Cash deposits (available at over 79,000 retail locations)
- Check deposits for eligible users
- Invoices and payments
Bookkeeping
Found will automatically track and categorize expenses whenever you use your Found debit card. You can also add expenses made on other platforms manually or add receipts to your transaction history with the app’s built-in photo receipt capture feature.
To give you a clear picture of your business activity, Found uses your account history to create real-time expense, income, profit, and loss reports.
Tax Tools
When Found tracks and categorizes your expenses, it notes down tax-deductible items and analyzes your banking data to provide real-time estimates of how much you owe in taxes. It even auto-generates a self-employed Schedule C form to reduce your paperwork during tax season.
Invoicing
Small business owners can create free, unlimited, and customized invoices for professional branding. The invoicing software includes credit cards, debit cards, direct deposits, Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal as payment options. It also allows automated billing through scheduling future and recurring invoices.
Mobile Banking
All of Found’s features are also available through the mobile app. To summarize, the app lets you:
- View balances
- Transfer funds
- Get notifications for transactions
- Create, send, and schedule invoices
- Categorize transactions
- View your tax estimate
- Freeze cards
- Generate your Schedule C form
The Found app obtained excellent ratings, with 4.8 on the App Store from around 14,000 reviews and 4.6 on Google Play from about 1,100 reviews. Most of the feedback is positive, where small business owners appreciated the accounting and tax features that made money management easy. However, some reviewers mentioned that Found lacks support for check deposits.
Other Found Business Products
If you want access to more advanced business tools, you can upgrade to Found Plus, which costs $19.99 per month (or $149.99 per year). Through Found Plus, you can:
- Create unlimited rules for bookkeeping categories
- Create custom bookkeeping categories
- Pull expense data through photo receipt capture
- Export bookkeeping data
- Pay taxes directly from the app
- Earn APY bonus
- Benefit from priority customer support
Found Business Checking Reviews From Users
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| No monthly maintenance fees, no minimum balance requirement, and no initial deposit requirement | Does not offer joint accounts |
| Free bookkeeping software and tax planning tools | |
| Hassle-free online account opening | |
On Trustpilot[3], Found has a rating of 4.6 from nearly 350 reviews. Most Found business checking reviews reflect positive comments. They stated that it has excellent and useful online financial tools for self-employed individuals and small business owners.
Users praised the provider for offering an efficient business banking system that enables easy business expense tracking. Other reviewers also liked the app’s ease of navigation and responsive customer service.
On the flip side, clients complained about their frozen accounts, with no reason given by the provider. Some also reported that Found is slow in posting transferred funds and does not offer loan options.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, Found is FDIC-insured through its bank partner, Piermont Bank.
Yes, Found lets users deposit cash at over 79,000 retail locations nationwide.
You can use the Found debit card to withdraw your money at ATMs or link a bank account to your Found account to perform fund transfers.
Bottom Line
A Found business checking account is ideal for freelancers, self-employed professionals, and sole proprietors who do the majority of their business management on their own. With Found, you can save on zero monthly fees and streamline your business operations with built-in accounting, invoicing, and tax tools.
There are also multiple ways to fund your business account—from performing wire transfers and direct deposits to using payment apps and depositing cash at many retail locations, which is convenient for small business owners.
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