Sole proprietorship - bank accounts

[Dziex]

Hi

I have looked through previous threads and have not found information on these questions:

• What app do you recommend to send invoices to clients and keep track on accounting?
• As a sole proprietor, do I have to open a company account or can it be a private one? From which I will transfer money to Octopus for "my" expenses? So that this money is not mixed.
• My clients prefer to pay me into my European account. If I transfer all the money to my HK account myself, is that ok or do they have to send it to the one I have here? Or should I use Paypal or something like that?

Thank you for your advice!

[muzzdang]

https://www.airwallex.com/hk/pricing#Expense-Management

I think Airwallex will solve most of your questions above

[PLamHK]

1. It really depends on how many invoices/clients you have, and what it is you are selling. If it's just your time as a service (which is what I do) then Excel works fine for me. If you have a load of costs, and particularly if you have employees, then obviously you'll need something like Airwallex, which friends of mine seem to be happy with.

2. No - you can use your private account. The only issue might be that if the name of your business is not your personal name then some clients might have issues paying invoices to a bank account whose name doesn't match the business name on the invoice.

3. I don't think it matters, so long as you can accurately document what's going on in the event of an audit by IRD. That's from a HK perspective. I've no idea what the tax authorities in the country where you receive the money might think.

[shri]

Here is the HSBC guidance without any opinion... Your call if you want to follow it or not.

[Dziex]

Thank you for all of your answers!

So one more question to make sure I found good information- If I will be a sole proprietor I will be working mostly online, so I was thinking about getting a different part-time job, so I can have contact with people. Do I have to look only for b2b contracts or can I go for example work in restaurant and be on some different contract?

[PLamHK]

Are you a HK Permanent Resident? If not, what type of visa do you have which allows you to work?

[Dziex]

I have dependant visa. Why does it matter?

[SirNotAppearing]

I think a dependant visa gives you the ability to do what you describe.

[PLamHK]

I have dependant visa. Why does it matter?

That's fine - it matters because if you didn't have a visa that allowed you to work freely then you would have great difficulty persuading IRD to let you register a Sole Prop.

[big_panda]

Open a business bank account for a sole proprietor. You will need a business registration to provide to the bank. DBS or Bank of China are solid picks. Might take up to 2 months to open.

For issuing invoices, if you dont have many invoices you can generate your own. Otherwise if you want software to issue invoices and also track payments and expenses, subscribe for a basic Xero accounting package.