The sixty-second answer
Three routes: add a number to a phone system you already have, use a second-number app on your mobile, or take a second carrier line. The first is usually same-day and gives you hours, greetings and transfers. Before accepting any number, ask in writing whether you can move it to another provider.
First, why do you want it?
The right route depends entirely on the reason, and there are only four common ones.
To stop giving out your personal number. The most common reason by a distance. Every solo business starts with the mobile in their pocket, and the bill for that arrives years later.
To look local somewhere else. You work in two towns, or you want customers in the next region to see a number that looks like theirs rather than a long-distance call.
To separate a line of work. Service calls on one number, new sales on another. Or a second business run out of the same building by the same two people.
To measure something. A distinct number on one ad, one truck wrap or one listing tells you exactly what that thing produced, without asking a single customer where they heard about you.
Write down which of the four applies. It decides the rest.
Route one: add a number to a phone system
If you already have a hosted phone system, this is a configuration change, usually same-day, and it is the only route that gives you real control over what the number does.
The reason is structural. On a modern system, a published number is an address that gets looked up when a call arrives, and the lookup returns whichever devices are signed in [1]. So a second number is not a second phone. It is a second address pointed at the same people, and you decide independently what it does: its own greeting, its own hours, its own ringing pattern so you know which business is calling before you pick up, its own voicemail box.
That last part is what makes measurement and separation work. Two numbers, one team, two behaviours. The building block is covered in what is a phone extension, and sharing the result across people is in can two people answer the same business number.
Route two: a second-number app
Cheap, instant, and genuinely fine for the narrow job of keeping your personal number private. You get a number that rings through an app on the phone you already carry.
What you generally do not get is business behaviour: hours, a proper greeting, transfers to another person, or a message that reaches you as an email. And you need to be careful about ownership. Ask what happens to the number if you stop paying, and whether it can be moved to another provider. If the answer is vague, treat the number as rented and do not print it on a vehicle.
Route three: a second carrier line
A second line or second card from a mobile carrier. It works, it rings, and it is the most expensive way to solve the problem in most cases, because you are buying an entire mobile service to get one number. It also puts business calls back on a personal device with none of the handling around them.
This route makes sense in one situation: you need the second number to work in places with no internet at all and you are not going to be near a desk. Otherwise the first route does more for less effort. If your worry is specifically what happens when the connection drops, read what happens to your business phones if the internet goes down.
Local or toll-free?
Local, unless you sell nationally. A local number is a claim about where you are, and in most trades that claim is worth more than the reassurance of a toll-free prefix. Customers in a small city read an out-of-area number as a call centre somewhere else, fairly or not.
Toll-free earns its place in two situations: your customers are spread across several provinces, or the number is going somewhere permanent like packaging or a manual, where you want it to outlive any office you happen to be in. There is no rule against having both pointed at the same team, and no reason both cannot be answered by the same greeting.
Four questions to ask before you accept a number
- Can I move it to another provider later? Get the answer in writing. This is the difference between an asset and a rental.
- Who is recorded as the holder of the number? It should be the business, not the provider and not an individual employee.
- What happens to it if I cancel? Ask how long you have to move it before it is released.
- What is the all-in monthly figure? Every mandatory charge included. Subsection 74.01(1.3) of the Competition Act treats a price that is not attainable because of fixed obligatory charges or fees as a false or misleading representation, unless the charge is imposed under an Act of Parliament or of a provincial legislature [5]. Ask by email so the answer is in writing.
A fuller list for a phone system generally is in questions to ask a hosted phone provider. If you are moving providers and want to keep numbers you already have, see switching systems without porting your numbers.
Make the new number behave differently
A second number that rings identically to the first is a wasted opportunity and a source of confusion. At minimum, give it a distinct greeting and a distinct ring so whoever answers knows which business or which service they are answering for. Give it its own hours if the two lines of work have different ones, using the patterns in after-hours and holiday call routing.
Also decide what it presents on outbound calls. If somebody rings a customer back from the new service and their personal mobile number appears on the customer's screen, you have just undone the entire exercise, and you cannot take that number back.
The two things people forget
Texting. Customers will text the number whether you planned for it or not. If you reply commercially, that is a commercial electronic message: section 6 of Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation prohibits sending one unless the recipient consented expressly or by implication, and requires prescribed identifying and contact information [4]. Replying to a person who just called about your service is comfortable ground. Sending a promotion to everyone who ever called is not.
Where the customer information ends up. A business number keeps call records, messages and customer details inside the business rather than in your personal call log. PIPEDA's Schedule 1 asks you to identify purposes at collection, obtain knowledge and consent, keep your policies readily available, and destroy, erase or anonymise information you no longer need under documented procedures [3]. That is a reasonable ask when the records live in a business system and a very hard ask when they live on a family phone.
The expense side
The Canada Revenue Agency lists telephone and utilities among deductible business expenses, stating you can deduct expenses for telephone, cellphone and utilities if you incurred them to earn income, with utilities related to a home workspace claimed as business-use-of-home expenses [2]. A distinct business number turns the business portion of your phone spending into a documented number instead of a defensible-looking estimate. Your accountant decides the treatment; your job is to make the record exist.
Where we sit
We run hosted phone systems for Canadian businesses, and adding a number is ordinary work: a second published number with its own greeting, hours, ring and voicemail, pointed at the people you already have, reachable on the phone you already carry. If you are starting from a personal mobile, whether a one-person business needs a phone system is the honest place to start, and answering business calls on your cell phone covers carrying one handset with two identities.
Most of the 1.08 million small businesses in Canada [6] get their second number from whoever asks them for the least paperwork, and find out about ownership and portability at the worst possible moment. Ask the four questions first. What our system includes, and how extensions are counted, is published on our pricing page.