If you don’t have enough money for an earnest money deposit than you shouldn’t be doing the deal. 

The cost of stuff today is absurd, especially since we only use licensed and insured vendors who don't require deposits upfront for work. 

note: they do have enough money to cover the first, last, and security deposit

You will have formation costs, earnest deposits, legal bills, due diligence costs, etc that will likely all come out of your pocket initially.  

Deposit a lot of money at a bank you will do business with in Illinois.  

They may be receiving rent payments casually in cash or depositing them into their personal account where everything is mixed together and hard to find the dates and amounts of payments to provide you.

I require a $1,000 security deposit, no exceptions and I let them know they will be paying all utilities, mowing the lawn, keeping up the landscaping and cleaning the gutter. 

If some applicants fall below your requirements, then everyone would be considered "conditional," you can raise the security deposit to mitigate your risk of someone breaking up or defaulting. 

Deposit the checkSometimes the banker will want a copy of the POA for their records, which we'll gladly provide.

I do not like this as obviously if a business account is only accumulating rent from 1 property, it wouldn't accrue the cash in each as quickly as it would if all of the rents were funneled into one account.. and it makes paying the bills a bit of a pain on each of the properties as I am having things done to the properties, lawn care, etc.. constantly has me making owner investment deposits into each to cover initial expenses associated with the properties.. etc.