Found Banking Review: The Best Checking Account for Self-Employed Workers (2024)

If you’re self-employed, you’re not just a gig worker, independent contractor or freelancer. What you really are is a small business owner.

If you don’t feel like you’re running a business, it might be because you don’t have access to the business-checking, bookkeeping and tax-prep tools that other small business owners use to grow their businesses.

We heard about a company called Found, which has been helping self-employed people do more with their earnings and avoid the mistakes that tend to make people lose money while trying to earn it. Best of all? It’s free.

What is Found?

Found is a financial technology company that was purpose-built to help self-employed people draw a clear line between personal and business expenses, ultimately making tax prep easier.

It offers business-banking services banked by the FDIC, along with invoicing tools, bookkeeping services and tax-prep help, all integrated into a single app. You can also access your account through its website.

All of Found’s core products are free. But if you’re an experienced self-employed worker, you’ll probably find that a subscription to Found Plus is worthwhile. It gives you more options to customize your account and its features, ultimately making your self-run business more efficient and potentially more profitable.

Found is ideal for self-employed individuals, such as rideshare drivers, freelance writers, freelance designers, personal trainers, independent consultants and other sole proprietors.

Found Banking Services and Features

Found offers four main products:

Business Checking

This is a business checking account designed just for freelancers. It comes with a Mastercard Business Debit card. There’s no credit check, no minimum balance requirements and no fees.

Invoicing

You can invoice your clients for free and accept payments from other apps, all from the Found app. And there’s no cap on how many invoices you can issue clients.

Bookkeeping

Found automatically saves each transaction you make with your business checking account into your records. That includes receipts for purchases and payments. And you can keep track of all of your expenses in one place.

Tax Preparation

Everything else is all in one place (receipts, invoices, earnings data), which makes tax prep a whole lot easier. Found even provides you with a tax estimate. It can also help you find tax credits with profit and loss statements and help you determine your tax-filing status.

Found’s tax-planning tools can also automatically deduct taxes from your earnings as you receive them. That way, there are no surprise tax bills lurking for you when tax season arrives.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Found

There’s a lot to like about Found’s products, especially if you work for yourself. But nothing is perfect. Here’s what we like most about Found’s business products and what could use improvement.

What We Like

We looked, but we couldn’t find any fees hiding in any of Found’s products. Sure, you can pay for added functionality, but all of the core services are offered completely free, and they really do simplify things.

What We Wish It Had

There isn’t much to dislike, especially if you’re self-employed. Since writing this review, they’ve added cash and check deposits along with chat support. It’d be nice if the free version paid interest on your savings, but you’ll have to sign up for Found Plus to take advantage of their 1.5% annual percentage yield.

Pricing and Fees (Found Plus)

While Found’s core services make self-employed life a lot easier, for a small subscription fee, life can get even easier for you.

Found Plus builds on the company’s core offerings with the ability to export your books to a third-party tax-prep tool if you want.

You can opt to pay taxes quarterly, create custom categories for your bookkeeping and take pictures of receipts to upload them into your accounts — which is really helpful if you pay for a business expense with cash or another card.

You can subscribe to Found Plus for just $19.99 per month, or save money with an annual subscription of $149.99 a year.

Who is Found Right For?

Found is a near-perfect all-in-one solution for self-employed people. This includes freelance writers, freelance graphic designers, app-based gig workers (Uber, Lyft, Door Dash, Instacart and the like), personal trainers, independent consultants and contractors who don’t employ staff.

Contractors who employ one or more staff members may be better served with conventional business banking services.

If you can live without earning interest on your savings, look no further than Found to run your small business like a small business. And because all the essential features are free, there are no barriers to entry.

Frequently Asked Questions About Found

Need to know a little more before you open a Found business checking account? We rounded up some answers to commonly asked questions around the web.

Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont Bank, Member FDIC. The Found Mastercard ® debit card is issued by Piermont Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard Inc. and may be used everywhere Mastercard debit cards are accepted.