Small Business Bank Accounts Discussion Area

patrascu09

As i mentioned nearly all of my banking is cash i can imagine that it would be a problem with BACS. But having experienced the Natwest and trying to pay the brewery (who bank with Natwest) through Natwest they have even forgotten to send details of my account number before, just imagine a multinational brewery trying to trace your payment :mad:

I think a lot of banks seem to be in a mess when it comes to BACS or even in some cases doing the most basic thing like adding a reference number.

Having been in a queue for an eternity at Natwest trying to pay money in to my account, behind people trying to cash up their spare money in tesco bags, i think i can deal with paying into a cashpoint.

We have 3 Santanders in my town the old Abbey, A & L which are 50 metres apart and a B & B which is 200 metres from there. They appear to be keeping all three open.
They also appear to be arranging for Post Office access as was the case with the old A & L accounts.

When i am not paying a single penny i cant see any reason to change. Compared to the Natwest it is like heaven on earth at present.

nelly10

Hello wonderful moneysavingpeople!

I'm opening my very first shop tomorrow! Terrified is not the word

Anyway, i'm selling beads and will only be dealing with cash. I'm within range of lots of banks so have choice. I need to pay in small amounts of cash,have direct debits set up and thats it really. What do you recommend? Did i mention its a really small business?

Savvy_Sue

I recommend that you get your research done ASAP, checking which of the banks you can easily get to will offer the services you need! Because in an ideal world you'd have your account before opening your shop: DH's charity opened a charity shop two weeks ago as a joint venture with another charity, and they are having a real struggle to get the account functioning (with Lloyds). They are able to pay money into a suspense account, but they have no cheque book and no way of paying any bills! Not good ...

Premier_2

As Savvy_Sue says, don't waste any more time over this basic necessity for a business.

It's not easy to open a business bank account, and if you fail to do so, your buisness venture could be over before it's begun.
You really should have sorted this out a long time prior to your opening day today.

JAYk_2

Anyone know what ones (business bank accounts) are suitable for online businesses?

veganline

Dexter794 wrote: »

Hello
I want to open a business account, is it ok to have it in my own name as i do a variety of things, plaster, tile, gardening and cleaning ovens. Would the HMRC be ok about this.
Cheers

I had an income tax inspection recently and no complaint about a separate bank account for business in my own name. Luckilly I had a bit of practice in book-keeping before the first inspection and discovered some other things...

• credit cards like MBNA and Egg deliberately give you statement data in ways that are hard to use for business accounts, with no running total and monthly totals quoted on different days to the top-up day. The only way around this is to use one card for one purpose, such as post and couriers, and not to try to balance any accounts until the money is direct-debited from your main account.
• the biggest headache in book keeping seems to be having two accounts. Lord Melbourne the nineteenth century prime minister said "it is not so important what we say as that we all say the same thing", and the same goes for books. You may have to have two accounts if you have a lot of money in unpaid invoices, but the simplest ideal is to count nothing but the cash in one bank account.
• At the time I tried Girobank / Alliance and Leicester / Santander's commercial bank account it was unusable. The security system was ramshackle, complex, unreliable, and required updates of various passwords every few months.

Oh I've typed a suggestion into the Your Freedom website; comments welcome: http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/cutting-business-and-third-sector-regulations/banks-building-societies-choice-of-bank-account-for-business

Premier_2

veganline wrote: »

...Oh I've typed a suggestion into the Your Freedom website; comments welcome: ...

The purpose of the dialogue on this website is to enable as many people as possible to submit, rate and comment on ideas on laws and regulations they would like to see removed.

...

We also reserve the right to remove an idea that suggests creating a new law, as this is outside the scope of this site. The purpose of the site is to collect ideas on what laws and regulations we can remove.

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/moderation_policy

Premier_2

JAYk wrote: »

Anyone know what ones (business bank accounts) are suitable for online businesses?

Well I guess almost all business bank accounts would be suitable, but if you operating online, you may wish to consider HSBC Business Direct account which may end up quite cheap/free for what you propose.

high.hat

Santander business banking is next to useless. You cant deposit money in a branch you have to post it (har har not posting cash to anyone) or deposit it in the cash point which doesnt take coins. This makes accounting impossible if someone has paid you 295.31... what do you do with the 31 pence????? useless!!! Im off to Barclays, at least they have counter services!!!

malc_b

In the past I've said I was happy with the co-op as business bank (as an FSB member I get free banking + £25 a year). The co-op have just changed their online banking after years of the old system being underpowered (i.e. as a site is was ok but often it kicked you off for lack of resources). The new site is awful.

1. New login uses a token. From the token you get given a 10 digit password with no spaces to make it readable. Strangely I can't hold a 10 digit password in my head nor am I a touch typist so it pretty hard to type this and not lose my place. Like most people I'd assume. And this is not new science. Credit cards are spaced in 4s to be readable. Other bank's tokens I have are 3+3 or 4+4

2. The instructions for use of the token to login are incorrect - sloppy!

3. The website fails to login with firefox but works in Opera and IE tab - more sloppy work!

After ages of waiting for Co-op to give their online banking a shot in the arm to boost it what we have is a shot in the foot instead.

Don't banks ever trial their websites? All these mistakes are pretty basic.

(EDIT)
And after trying it I find it is even worse. It is far slower than the old website which wasn't exactly fast either. The design is not at all usable. Take the most used recent transactions display. To get to that I have to enter a start date, it doesn't default to the last 10 or 20 as most banks do. The display is now in a frame (smaller than my page) so I can't see all the info without scrolling left and right and up and down. And to make that worse the column headings are not fixed. So I can see and know what the top 3 entries are but scroll down to 4 + and I've no clue what the numbers are.

You can't just type a date either, no you have to wait for a pop-up (which opera blocks for me).

Tip is to nickname the account a short name, no spaces. That way you 6 lines displayed. Account names with spaces fold so take up more space.