Banking that works for 1 PC breaks at 5. Here's what changes at each step from 1 to 10 PCs — and when to switch before it costs you a deal.
Banking that fits 1 PC won't fit 10. Here's what changes at every step, and the order to upgrade so you don't switch under deadline pressure.
You opened your first PC with a checking account at the corner bank. You opened your fifth at 2 a.m. on a Sunday because that's when you finally had time. The corner bank doesn't scale. Most banks don't.
Here's what banking looks like at every step from 1 PC to 10. And what to ask for before you outgrow it.
One PC, one checking account, one debit card. You're a small business as far as the bank is concerned. Anyone can do this.
What works:
What you'll outgrow: visibility, sweep options, and the assumption that one signer is fine forever.
Now you have three logins, three reconciliation cycles, three sets of statements, more than the account types a growing group actually needs (opens in a new tab) to juggle manually. Your CFO does math in a spreadsheet on Sunday nights.
Start asking for:
If your bank can't deliver these in under an hour of explanation, switch.
At 5 PCs, you almost certainly have an MSO doing payroll, vendor management, and shared services, the point where a full setup checklist once the MSO becomes real (opens in a new tab) actually earns its keep. The MSA is real. Money moves between entities monthly.
Now non-negotiable:
This is where most generalist banks tap out.
At 10 PCs, banking is infrastructure. You're not picking a bank. You're picking a platform.
The new questions:
For Lemma, those answers are same day, yes, 4 hours, and with a single rule set you write once.
Switching banks feels expensive. New paperwork, new logins, retraining the front desk. So groups keep limping along.
The real cost is on the other side. Idle cash earning nothing. CFO time burned on reconciliation. A diligence pack that takes a quarter to assemble. By the time a PE process starts, you can't fix it on the timeline you have.
Switching at PC #3 costs a weekend. Switching at PC #8 costs a deal.
If you're scaling from 1 to 10 over the next 24 months, do these in order:
The bank you opened with isn't usually the bank that gets you to 10. Pick a bank built to scale from one PC to ten (opens in a new tab), before you have to switch under deadline pressure.