Small Business Bank Accounts Discussion Area

Stevewegs

Hi polymaff
The account name shown on bank cheque/paying in book is harmonised cabling services it doesn't show the ltd bit

polymaff

Stevewegs wrote: »

Hi polymaff
The account name shown on bank cheque/paying in book is harmonised cabling services it doesn't show the ltd bit

The norm is to use the exact name - including the LIMITED. What I was fishing for was "Steve Wegs T/A Harmonised Cabling Services".

Difficult to advise without knowing more than you'd probably feel comfortable publishing on MSE..

jonesMUFCforever

If you don't have a limited company account then they are correct in chasing you up for the debt.
Even IF you had a limited company account it is standard practise for a bank to take a personal guarantee to cover any limited company debt.

lizzih

Hi All
I am in the early stages of starting up a business (retail shop). Does anyone have any experience of the paypal pdq machine and how it compares to the regular type of pdq?
Can anyone recommend a good deal/company for taking card payments?

Many thanks:A

RobsterUK

I recently had a bit of a shock with what Co-op charge on their standard business current account. I had been on their FSB free banking deal, but after the first year I let my FSB membership lapse as it seemed like they kept trying to sell me things I didn't want. It took a while but Co-op recently cottoned on and wrote to me to tell me they were moving me to their standard tariff. I thought fair enough and didn't look into the charges as I'd known it was going to happen at some point, and I didn't think it would be much as nearly all my transactions are electronic.

It turns out that if you have less than £1,000 in the account, they charge you 70p for pretty much every type of transaction, including:
- Standing order payments
- Direct debit payments
- Debit card payments

So without realising it, every time I made a card payment for fuel, or a sandwich , or a USB lead for my tablet (£1.50) it was costing me 70p.
So my first month of charges came to £24.19.

I don't want to re-join the FSB, and I'm not likely to have over £1,000 in the account any time soon (I recently requested and got an overdraft). So I've applied for an account with TSB.

stevetuk

I wondered if anyone can advise?

We've been trading as sole trader for 14 months and now want to transition to trading under a limited company entity. We're using a personal current account for now with a £1750 overdraft which doesn't give us much flexibility. I don't think we're eligible for any start up business account deals?

The majority of our payments are received electronically. They're less than £4,000 per month. Our largest payouts are usually faster payments made electronically and the largest is than £2.000 per transaction.

We receive cash payments as well and deposit these. Average is around £500-£1000 per month but it could be as high as £2-3,000 as a one off.

We very rarely deal in cheques (we used to at the start but no longer).

Can anyone recommend an account/bank that would be suitable? I can provide more info if necessary!

Many thanks

Steve

eskbanker

stevetuk wrote: »

We've been trading as sole trader for 14 months and now want to transition to trading under a limited company entity. We're using a personal current account for now with a £1750 overdraft which doesn't give us much flexibility. I don't think we're eligible for any start up business account deals?

The article linked from page 1 of this thread (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/small-business#acc) has some accounts suited to small businesses with low or no charges for an initial period.

I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be eligible for these - I don't believe they're actually only available to start-ups as such but if you're shifting from sole trader (not sure how that's a 'we' not an 'I' though!) to limited company then that is presumably a new company anyway....

stevetuk

eskbanker wrote: »

The article linked from page 1 of this thread (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/small-business#acc) has some accounts suited to small businesses with low or no charges for an initial period.

I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be eligible for these - I don't believe they're actually only available to start-ups as such but if you're shifting from sole trader (not sure how that's a 'we' not an 'I' though!) to limited company then that is presumably a new company anyway....

Thanks, I had a look through those but they were all geared to start-ups. The Santander start-up explicitly says in the T&Cs that a change in legal entity is not counted as a start-up so I assumed the others wouldn't be

jonesMUFCforever

stevetuk wrote: »

Thanks, I had a look through those but they were all geared to start-ups. The Santander start-up explicitly says in the T&Cs that a change in legal entity is not counted as a start-up so I assumed the others wouldn't be

Why assume ! Check the T&C 's of all the banks you are considering - if you are still not sure phone them.

carolth

Hello, first time on this forum. Wondering if anyone can give us advice. We are a small partnership business who have been in business for over 40 years. Have banked with HSBC all along without any problems & were paying a fixed fee/tariff right up until last month when without any communication they hiked up the fees, & put us on individual transactional fees which has resulted in monthly banking costs for the business shooting up by 3oo%. Have tried to discuss with our local branch & get no sense whatever, they say nothing can be done & will not negotiate in any way even after threatening to look for alternative banking facilities.