Small Business Bank Accounts Discussion Area

HappySad

I think that I will goto Abbey. They have a branch near to my son's school & from what I believe I am hearing their online facility is good. They are also free foe ever. I think they make all their money from business going overdrawn with expensive charges for everything. I woul put £500 and use that as my own overdraft.

What are their downsides? How is their customer service by phone like. Is the phone service from the Uk? Any tips for dealing best with their customers service?

Can I receive Visa payments from
customers into this account for free?

FarmerJo

I am finding it difficult to work out which business bank account has the most straight forward web site. They all seem to require me to remember my best friends dog's middle name or some equally fluffy stuff of their own suggestion in order to log in. Do any of the online banking services operate just with a card reader login for instance?

nickj_2

FarmerJo wrote: »

I am finding it difficult to work out which business bank account has the most straight forward web site. They all seem to require me to remember my best friends dog's middle name or some equally fluffy stuff of their own suggestion in order to log in. Do any of the online banking services operate just with a card reader login for instance?

barclays have pin sentry which you just enter your pin no and it gives you an 8 number code to get into your account , plus if you are paying anyone from that account online then it provides another code for this , although you only have to do this once for each person / company you need to pay

stphnstevey

cloudwalker_3 wrote: »

Following on from what other's have posted on this thread, I’d also recommend the Co-operative Bank/Federation of Small Businesses deal.

Being a member of the FSB has a lot of advantages if you’re self employed: legal advice from qualified lawyers, tax advice from HMRC trained specialists, information on employment law, health & safety and other business issues and free downloadable legal document templates that you can customise to suit your business. As a member, one of the other benefits that you also get is free business banking for life with the Co-operative Bank.

The Co-operative does all the normal stuff that banks do, so they can meet all your day-to-day business banking needs but in addition to this, they have a very strong ethical policy that makes them one of the best banks to be with, (in my opinion anyway).

The rest of the details for the free business banking deal are:
1. No minimum balance required for the account;
2. No monthly service charge, (unless you have a debit balance)
3. No fees to pay on standard non-cash transactions
4. An unlimited number of cheques can be paid into and debited from your account
5. You can pay in up to £4,000 cash every month for free
6. They pay interest on your entire credit balance
7. A fee-free overdraft facility

On top of all of this, for each year that you continue to bank with them, (for free) you get a £25 annual loyalty bonus.

It really doesn’t get any better than this in terms of business banking.


.

You have to PAY the FSB membership though - £150+ minimum :eek:

FarmerJo

Thank you nickj, I think the example of the Government Gateway seems like one the banks could follow, one set of numbers that they think of and a password that we think of. Being given a set of questions thought up by middle aged wasp men as a security measure seems rather inappropriate. I did phone the Nationwide and ask them why they assumed that I had a pet or could provide a response to the selection of questions of their choice and got a rather lame response from above mentioned chappie

Paulgonnabedebtfree

HappySad wrote: »

I think that I will goto Abbey. They have a branch near to my son's school & from what I believe I am hearing their online facility is good. They are also free foe ever. I think they make all their money from business going overdrawn with expensive charges for everything. I woul put £500 and use that as my own overdraft.

What are their downsides? How is their customer service by phone like. Is the phone service from the Uk? Any tips for dealing best with their customers service?

Can I receive Visa payments from
customers into this account for free?

Most of what happens at Abbey (Santander) seems to work most of the time.
However, if your customers pay by BACS and you want the BACS references to show up then avoid. I've been banging on at them about this for a very long time and it's not very productive.
I have written a letter to them now but I'm not hopeful of a positive outcome.
Letter pasted below with personal details omitted. Although my letter may not seem very businesslike, I have been trying to convey my frustration.

---

Sort code: removed
Account number: removed

my name and address
here

Dear Sir,
Firstly I wish to say that I regret having to contact the complaints department about the matter detailed in the rest of my letter. It could easily have been resolved in other ways. The matter that I intend to outline does not refer specifically to my account but is about, in my view, a glaring omission from the Santander business banking service. Most times I have telephoned over the past three years or so, I have brought this up as a side issue and sometimes I have phoned about it as the main issue.
The matter I am referring to is the total lack of BACS reference numbers for incoming BACS payments.
Effectively this is the equivalent of me paying my Santander credit card by BACS and just supplying “<my name removed>” as the payment reference rather than supplying the 16 digit card number. I.e. you would not know who had made the payment.
Until now, I have managed to keep track of which customers pay by BACS because the amount paid and the name of the account holder does show up on the online banking. However, it can get complicated when, for example, I may have three customers by the surname “Jones” who each pay £20.
With the demise of the cheque in the coming years, it is more important than ever that Santander start supplying the BACS references. I wish to convert as many customers as possible over to paying by BACS and Santander’s persistent refusal to start re-supplying the relevant references is holding me back.
This situation has already cost me money. Until around December 2008, the BACS references were supplied but they could only be seen after the end of the accounting month - in the archives. I regularly phoned up to request that the references be made available in real time. I supply a six weekly <job description removed> service. It is important for me to know who has paid by BACS because on a follow up visit, I need to know who owes me for one job and who owes me for two etc. Delaying the ability to see the BACS references until the end of the month often made this impossible.
When Santander changed its system in December 2008 , it did actually start supplying the BACS references in real time. I thought this was great. I printed out several hundred letters to inform my customers that I would now be able to accept payments by BACS. After distributing some of these letters, the BACS references suddenly disappeared. Worse than that, they were not even supplied at the end of the month. In fact, to this date, the BACS references have never re-appeared. The “historical transaction” part of the website has since re-appeared. I note that many BACS references are also there. However, the fact remains that Santander still do not display the BACS references of transactions that occur - nor have they for some time past. Having written that, I do note that one of my customer BACS reference does show up but all the customers under the “faster payments” scheme do not. When the BACS references disappeared, I had to scrap all the letters I had printed out because I could not increase the number of customers who pay by BACS as I would easily lose track of who had paid
Could you please start showing the incoming BACS references again in real time? At the moment they don’t even get archived.
As things currently stand, I have recently started a business banking account elsewhere. As a member of the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses), I am entitled to free banking managed by Co-op bank. Co-op bank do in fact show the bank references in real time. However, depositing cash and cheques is more difficult with Co-op bank due to the lack of branches and the fact that it has to be done via certain, pre-selected sub post offices. I find the Santander ATM system much easier.
So I find myself in the ludicrous position of needing one account (Co-op) to accept BACS payments so that I know which customer has paid me and another account (Santander) to deposit cash and cheques. I intend to gradually switch the customers who pay by BACS over to the Co-op bank unless Santander gets its act together and starts supplying BACS references in real time. I don’t want to do this but I feel that Santander are leaving me little choice. How can anyone run a small business not always knowing which customers have paid and which haven’t?
As cheques are gradually phased out, I will need to switch more customers over to BACS (and therefore the Co-op). I really don’t want to do this. Please make it possible for me to stay.
I realise it counts for little these days but I’ve been a Santander customer for over 30 years in the various incarnations of Abbey National then Abbey.
This is an infuriating situation for me because the issue of BACS references is so easy to resolve. It’s merely about showing an extra field from your database on the online banking pages. You used to do it then you stopped it. So it is possible.
The other annoying aspect to this is that I’ve had to actually write a letter at all. Surely it is blindingly obvious that if someone receives a payment by electronic transfer, they need to see the reference number that they supplied to their customer?
Just seeing (for example)

J Smith Faster payments £25.00

is not enough. I need to see

J Smith Faster payments <supplied reference number> £25.00.

That reference number is crucial for me because it contains house number (or abbreviation of house name) plus the postcode i.e. a unique identifier.
It was suggested to me a long time ago to write to the complaints department by the person who answered the phone for Santander. I have held back in the vain hope that other people were also complaining about this issue and that someone who mattered would actually resolve it. The news about the eventual phasing out of cheques has, however, been a catalyst for me and has brought the need to resolve the issue of BACS references into sharper focus.
So do you or do you not intend to start re-supplying the BACS references in real time (or at all for that matter)?
If yes then please say when (and whether it will be in real time or at month end).
If no then please say so in order that I can start moving my dealings to a bank that does show this information.
I realise that I’m just a small nobody and am totally aware that moving my banking elsewhere is a non issue for Santander.
Please note that I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE but that Santander seem to be making it difficult to stay.
Sorry to have gone on as much as this but this is an important issue for me. I already note that a couple of my own customers who have businesses have left Santander partly because of this issue (and partly others).
Also, there have been other issues about which I should write but I don’t wish to dilute the issue about the lack of BACS references.

Yours truly
<name + business name>

Paulgonnabedebtfree

stphnstevey wrote: »

You have to PAY the FSB membership though - £150+ minimum :eek:

£100 for me. The higher fee is just for the first year.

mymands

I opened business acct with coop bank thru FSB and although they are good in general the pay in system whereby you have to use post office for cheques and cash is appalling. I have just called coop again (4th time this has happened to me) as have banked at my local post office 2 cheques from customers amounting to £4054 last friday 12th and it is still not in my bank account!! Coop says give it more time but in november last year I banked £3000 and the cheque got lost - then onus is then on me to contact customer and ask them to check if cheque has cleared if not cancel cheque and re-issue! The november cheque never turned up and I am now chasing this customer to get the money from them. This has happened another twice for smaller amounts but I find it so frustrating to have to continually chase this up and always involves such a lot of work for me. Today is the final straw - now looking at this forum to find another bank that I won't have this problem with. The post office workers in the small local branches are useless and not trained as when I go to main p.o. they tell the local p.o. is not carrying out the correct procedure! Wringing my hands out here with the frustration of it and now hoping that maybe the cheque will show up in a couple of days time in my account but does anyone else think that 7 working days is a long time to wait for money to show???

Paulgonnabedebtfree

mymands wrote: »

I opened business acct with coop bank thru FSB and although they are good in general the pay in system whereby you have to use post office for cheques and cash is appalling. I have just called coop again (4th time this has happened to me) as have banked at my local post office 2 cheques from customers amounting to £4054 last friday 12th and it is still not in my bank account!! Coop says give it more time but in november last year I banked £3000 and the cheque got lost - then onus is then on me to contact customer and ask them to check if cheque has cleared if not cancel cheque and re-issue! The november cheque never turned up and I am now chasing this customer to get the money from them. This has happened another twice for smaller amounts but I find it so frustrating to have to continually chase this up and always involves such a lot of work for me. Today is the final straw - now looking at this forum to find another bank that I won't have this problem with. The post office workers in the small local branches are useless and not trained as when I go to main p.o. they tell the local p.o. is not carrying out the correct procedure! Wringing my hands out here with the frustration of it and now hoping that maybe the cheque will show up in a couple of days time in my account but does anyone else think that 7 working days is a long time to wait for money to show???

It is a long time but it must be remembered that when using an agent rather than depositing directly at the bank, it will take at least a day longer as it doesn't start the clearance process until the Co-op bank has it. I know with my Abbey account it is normally clear on the same day of the week as I make the deposit into the ATM but a week later (an easy way to remember it) - so five working days I think. Obviously it takes a bit longer when there are public holidays.

HappySad

I am now looking to go with Natwest now. I am hoping that I get a decent business account manager at my local branch and I am also hoping that I can link my Natwest iphone application to this bank account also.

I have listest all the features I want from a bank that I can get from Natwest.

• Free banking - 2 years
• Online banking
• Telephone banking in UK - 24hour automated
• Local Branch - close to son's school.
• Business branch manager
• Text alert with balance & mini statements. - free
• Iphone application to view/action account while out & about. - free

Also want, free overdraft with no setup cost & ecommerce

Want online e payment /ecommerce system for my online business. - What is this called and would this cost extra to setup. I want customers to be able to pay using their visa card on my website and for this to go straight into my account with their details so that I can check that they have paid. What is needed and is there a charge?
Also want to offer customers alternative payment via PayPal. Would I need a business bank credit cart to set this up. HOw to I go about this?

Do you have any advice about setup & using ecommerce & paypal on the online business???

I have read bad things about all banks so whoever I choose will not be all that good. Natwest is close to my son's school so I would be able to pop in just before I pick my son up in the afternoon.