As the world turns increasingly digital banking for small businesses is along for the ride, although some folks struggle to keep up with the changes. Business online banking in the DMV is evolving beyond the conveniences of checking your balance and making payments. It offers treasury management services and small business banking technology such as fraud prevention, ACH automation, and remote deposit capture, plus AI-powered financial insights and cash flow forecasting. This kind of small business banking technology can help you run your business more efficiently while improving your cash flow, strengthening your security, and give you the tools you need to make better financial decisions.
Why Digital Banking Is Evolving for Small Businesses
If you find yourself stressed for time running your business with too much on your plate, you’re not alone. A survey of small business owners this year by Small Business Expo reported that 46.5% of respondents said what they needed the most was more time to run their businesses. This surpassed all other needs of small business owners such as lower costs (29%) and better technology (18.3%). Online banking for businesses in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) can help you with two of these needs, with banking technology that can help you manage your business finances more efficiently, which gives you more time to spend running the business itself.
How Digital Banking Improves Cash Flow and Efficiency
Small businesses run on cash flow, and it’s crucial to their survival. With digital banking, you can check your accounts anytime through online and mobile banking. If you’re wondering when a payment will be received in your account, just set up an account alert so you’ll be notified promptly rather than checking your balance throughout the day. Need to deposit a check? You can do so remotely using our mobile app or one of our scanners, which saves you the time and inconvenience of having to run to a bank branch or an ATM.
You can pay your bills digitally through our online portal, which is faster, more secure, and more convenient than sending and receiving checks. You’ll also never have to wonder if a check will arrive on time because digital payments eliminate the guessing game of waiting for snail mail. You’ll know exactly which payments you sent, which ones you’ve received, and where you stand financially at all times.
Treasury Management Tools for More Efficient Cash Handling
Whether you have just one person who can access your business accounts, or multiple users, with treasury management tools you can control just how much control each person has and the types of transactions they can make. You can also view your account balances and transaction history in real time, and initiate account transfers, make wire transfers, pay your bills, reconcile your accounts and set up account alerts.
Make Remote Deposits from Just about Anywhere
While digital banking is increasingly popular, we recognize that some people still prefer paper checks. We can set you up with a check scanner so you can deposit checks quickly and remotely from your office, without having to visit a bank branch or an ATM. You can also use our mobile app. In most cases, funds are typically available within the next business day. You can view images of your deposited checks for up to two years online.
ACH And Payment Automation for Quick and Easy Payments
Automated clearinghouse (ACH) payments are much more efficient than paper checks. They save you time and money while improving your cash flow management because you can monitor your outflows and inflows to make sure you make your payments and receive them on time. You can also set up automated payments for your regular transactions, such as rent or mortgage payments, business loan payments, insurance, and the like. This way you can spend less time making sure you issue payments on time and more time running your business. You can also pay your employees through direct deposit, set up preauthorized debits from a customer’s account, and transfer funds into your FVCbank account from accounts at other financial institutions.
Merchant Services for Efficient Card Processing
We not only provide businesses with secure credit and debit card processing, we can also offer a cost-free analysis where we review your transactions and offer solutions directly suited to your business with competitive pricing and online reporting.
Zero Balance Accounts for Automated Transfers
A zero balance account (ZBA), also known as a sweep transfer account, is typically used by businesses with multiple bank accounts and is set up with automatic transfers between them. For example, you might have one master account where your business funds are held, plus multiple other accounts such as a payroll account for making payroll, a tax account for making your quarterly payments, and a business checking account for your everyday expenses.
If any funds are needed, such as to cover your payroll or make a tax payment, there could be an automatic transfer from your master account to your payroll or tax account. At the end of each business day, whatever funds are left in your sub-accounts are could be automatically transferred to your master account. This lets you centralize your accounts, which makes monitoring your funds much easier, and automatic transfers can save you the time and inconvenience of having to check each account to make sure they have enough to cover their obligations. This improves your cash flow management, reduces your risk of an overdraft, and makes the most of any idle balances sitting in your different accounts.
Security Will Continue to Be a Top Priority
Fraud prevention and account controls remain a top concern for small business owners. A recent survey by the Public-Private Strategies Institute reported that 72% of small businesses had experienced some kind of fraud or scam attempt within the past year. Payment fraud and email phishing scams were the most frequently reported. The average cost of these types of fraud was $60,000 for payment fraud and $90,000 for a business email compromise.
Paper checks can be stolen and misused while digital payments aren’t just faster; they’re also more secure. You can set up account alerts to let you know of any transactions beyond a certain threshold. This not only helps you with cash flow management, it can also improve your security by warning you of large payments and transfers.
Use the Right Tools to Protect Your Accounts
The PPSI survey indicated that many small businesses aren’t doing all they can to keep their accounts secure. For example, just 48% of small businesses used multifactor authentication, while 70% of businesses that use this method say it’s very effective in protecting their accounts.
The genius of multifactor authentication is that if a criminal managed to steal, hack into, or guess your password, they still wouldn’t be able to access your account because multifactor authentication would still block them from logging in. The only way someone could log on to your account is if you approved it through an app on your phone or a numerical code sent to you by text or email.
This doesn’t mean you should use simple passwords just because they’re easy to remember. Make sure your passwords are complicated enough that it would be hard for someone to guess. Your security questions (for a password reset) should be something that would be hard for someone else to figure out—something they couldn’t find through a Google search or on social media.
A password manager could help with this while also making your life simpler. Using a password manager means you would only need to memorize one password, and it should be something that’s easy for you to remember but would be hard for someone to guess. With a browser extension, your password manager could store your passwords in a vault and enter them for you when you log on to different accounts. Of course, you should also use multifactor authentication with your password manager to improve your security.
Use Positive Pay for Secure Transactions
Another way to protect your funds and avoid getting ripped off is to use Positive Pay for your checks and ACH payments. With Positive Pay, you give us a list of your paper checks and ACH payments. If someone tries to deposit a check or receive an ACH payment, we’ll automatically compare it to your list of payments. If something doesn’t add up, such as the recipient, the amount, or the date, we’ll put a hold on that payment and notify you so you can either reject or approve payment. Not only does this reduce your chance of fraud, it can also save you from the time and inconvenience of monitoring your accounts and watching for signs of fraud.
Gain AI-Powered Financial Insights
While discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) seem to be everywhere these days, many people might not be aware that it can be a useful part of small business banking technology, and it’s a part of our digital banking for small businesses solutions. We believe that digital banking is about more than payments and invoices; it means accessing the future of digital banking today with modern treasury management services and tools to make running your business as efficient as possible, while helping you monitor your business finances and improve your cash management with concrete solutions for your business.
A Free Financial Intelligence Tool
Business Insights, our mobile financial assistant, can give you greater insight and increased confidence in your financial decisions. It’s a financial dashboard that helps you analyze financial trends, forecast your cash flow, and compare your business performance to similar companies within your industry, while also protecting your data. It’s like having your own financial analyst who works for free and never takes a day off.
Just link your accounting software to our Business Insights system and receive actionable insights within minutes. You can ask Business Insights to produce automated cash flow forecasts to help you with your financial planning and reduce your risk of surprises, such as a sudden cash shortfall. It can also make recommendations and personal insights to help your business improve its financial performance. It can also offer real-time financial projections so you can estimate and test the impact of your important business decisions before you implement them. Best of all, you don’t even need to be a tech guru or an AI expert because we’ve made this simple to use. Of course, if you have any questions or concerns, one of our local bankers can help you get started and answer any questions.
Why Local Banking Still Matters in a Digital First World
While digital banking for small businesses is all about convenience and efficiency, sometimes you need a face-to-face meeting with a banker who understands and supports the needs of local businesses in the DMV and has the authority to approve a business loan. As a local bank serving the DMV, we believe that our local expertise paired with modern technology gives DMV businesses a competitive advantage.
Explore our Digital Banking and Treasury Management Solutions
If you have any questions about small business online banking in the DMV, please set up a business banking consultation or open a business checking or business savings account by calling 703.436.4740. You can also contact us online or visit one of our locations in Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Arlington County, Virginia, and Washington, DC.
