Top Small Biz Savings Accounts

Willowtree, post #13: it's a long time since you posted so you may not see this or you might be sorted, but if you're still needing something A&L Commercial's Free Business Current Account (not a savings a/c) might fit the bill.
https://www.alliance-leicestercommercialbank.co.uk/content/SB010002.asp

We use it only for banking cash and nothing else -- main business a/c is still elsewhere at one of the 'Big 4', and nothing tempts us to move it over to A&L, not even free banking. The cash just goes in temporarily to save on charges, then a cheque straight from there for the same amount into the main business a/c. It's reduced our costs for banking cash and the way we use it works well for us, but there are conditions and lower/upper limits to avoid charges from A&L for banking cash, so read carefully to see if it would be suitable for you. Available for sole traders or limited companies with turnover less than £1m, and you can deposit the cash at any Post Office.

A&L is part of Santander, and their systems will be merging later this year. Whether we'll still be able to use the a/c then as we do now, we wait to see.

gibby wrote: »

Martin recommends Abbey as a free bank account for business.
It is free but just like the personal banking, service is really really poor & they make a lot of mistakes.

A better deal is the coop as if you are a FSB member (simply join for the benefits & don't renew) all biz banking is 100% free

Also for FSB members is cheaper card payment services
usually with the major banks you have to pay a hefty set up fee to take card payments (both online or through a pdq machine) of £200 to £500 each

With the FSB deal its free setup with Streamline/Natwest & the rates you are charged are better too.


G

I realise I'm responding to a fairly old post but maybe it will be picked up on.
I have been with Abeey for about 30 years in their various incarnations as Abbey National, Abbey, and now Santander. It see,med reasonably OK to me until Santander started getting their hands on it. Although it may not sound like much my biggest issue with them (in addition to multiple minor niggles) is the lack of BACS reference numbers for incoming electronic payments. I wonder what use a free banking service really is if youy don't know which customers have paid and wich haven't. Fortunately the surname and the amount shows and most times, these two things are unique to a particular customer due to the size of my regular customer base (250 - 300 customers). Witrh a commercial customer it'sa not such an issue as the company name shows. However, with a domestic customer, I only get the account holder's name and the amount paid. Most customers who do not pay on the day sends me a cheque - quite alarming now that cheques are to be phased out over the next few years. Anyway, as a member of the FSB, I have opened a free Co-op business account just to take the BACS payments. It's unfortunate that Abbey are really easy to pay into (I live near a branch and do it by ATM) whereas with Co-op I can use up to four sub post offices BUT Abbey/Santander won't supply BACS references but Co-op do. I am in the ludicrous position of having to use the Co-op account for incoming BACS payments and Santander for depositing cash and cheques. It's not as if Santander are unable to supply the references. They used to then they stopped (after I started gearing up my business to receive such payments).
There have been other niggles with Abbey like ignoring requests (on multiple occasions) for stationery, failing to return cheques to me that failed to clear (to enable me to know which customer to chase), and imposing charges for more than 100 cheques in a month (when the number was less than 100). The charges were refunded promptly. The other issues seem to be OK now. But that lack of BACS references continues to blight how I feel about them. I've actually become so resentful about it that someone phoned me up to upgrade my Santander business account recently and they received a lengthy rant about what a bunch of <expletives> ran the bank.
No BACS references may not sound like much but I want to gradually convert my customer base to mostly paying either this way or by cash. At the moment I can keep track. Once I increase the number of BACS payments, that will be much harder. So I'm having to run two parallel accounts to get the best bit of each. I would rather have one decent account that ticked all the boxes - and I would be happy to pay for that. I just wouldn't want to pay per transaction because, as a window cleaner, some of those transactions are fairly small on the smaller domestic cleans.