We are opening up an account for ABC, LLC, which owns two subsidiaries, Company A, LLC and Company B, LLC. They are all under one tax ID number and taxes are filed under the ABC, LLC name. They would like to have one operating account under the name of ABC, LLC, but allow checks to be written to either Company A or Company B and deposited into ABC, LLC.

Could I title the account:

ABC, LLC
D/B/A Company A
D/B/A Company B

or maybe use the For Benefit Of designation? I have not worked on the retail side of opening accounts so could use some guidance on best practices.

Usually, banks will not allow these as it is too hard for the tellers to screen deposits before accepting them. If they want one operating account, then they should establish a consolidation operating account and then subaccounts for the various businesses and then the bank can transfer available balances automatically to the consolidation account.

I have to wonder whether the three LLCs ever talked to legal counsel about using this sort of arrangement. As a general rule, separate LLCs are set up in order to protect assets from liability suits, so that, for example, a creditor of LLC A cannot attach the assets of LLC B in order to collect on debts owed by LLC A to the creditor. When those LLCs commingle assets (as would be the case in a common bank account), they could jeopardize the "corporate veil" that affords such protection from creditors.

Or maybe they did consult counsel, and have chosen to ignore whatever advice they got. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened.