Small Business Bank Accounts Discussion Area

Paulgonnabedebtfree

HappySad wrote: »

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.

E-commerce and accepting card payments and paypalk are things I've never done myself.
I just saw your sig and wanted to say congratulations on the weight loss.
Well done !!

HappySad

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

E-commerce and accepting card payments and paypalk are things I've never done myself.
I just saw your sig and wanted to say congratulations on the weight loss.
Well done !!

Thanks for your message. I put on 6 stone with the 2nd baby & 2 years later I have lost it all & keeping it off. I am now going into business to support other mums to do the very same thing.

HappySad

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

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>

Thanks for sharing your letter with us. As a suggestion I would send this letter to the highest person in the Abbey and email it to that person. I would also suggest that you reduce the letter greatly. Say that you WILL be leaving Abbey and let other know what a bad service you are getting. It needs to have more ANGER in the letter. State that you have already posted about the bad service on MSE which already has 5,000 viewers.

I have found Abbey not very customer focused. I have an account with them on at one state almost left them because of the bad service. They have free business banking for life but I know their service is bad. I am trying out Natwest to see how they are.


All the best with your change with Abbey. I personally feel that they will not change so you would have to consider moving to somewhere else that can give you what you want. I must be a read headache to have to work out who has paid what from your statement. This is basic and this would be what I will expect Natwest to provide this as how can I tell who has paid and who has not.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

HappySad wrote: »

Thanks for sharing your letter with us. As a suggestion I would send this letter to the highest person in the Abbey and email it to that person. I would also suggest that you reduce the letter greatly. Say that you WILL be leaving Abbey and let other know what a bad service you are getting. It needs to have more ANGER in the letter. State that you have already posted about the bad service on MSE which already has 5,000 viewers.

I have found Abbey not very customer focused. I have an account with them on at one state almost left them because of the bad service. They have free business banking for life but I know their service is bad. I am trying out Natwest to see how they are.


All the best with your change with Abbey. I personally feel that they will not change so you would have to consider moving to somewhere else that can give you what you want. I must be a read headache to have to work out who has paid what from your statement. This is basic and this would be what I will expect Natwest to provide this as how can I tell who has paid and who has not.

As far as being able to tell who has paid, I can keep on top of it because once Abbey/Santander starting withholding the BACS references, I stopped offering payments by BACS. Therefore, my BACS payers are a relatively small number and it is possible to work it out. Jobs I do for other companies (rather than private householders) are easier because the bit whjere the customer name appears is also where the company name does - so that's not such an issue with commercial jobs.
As for altering the letter - too late I'm afraid as it has already been posted. If you think that letter was bad, you should have seen the first draft . It contained a sentence that said something like "when some of you have finished polishing Lewis Hamilton's boots for him, could you get off your bums and start supplying the BACS references. I never seriously intended to send that bit but just wanted a venting session before I cut a load of it.
The irony of all this is that I would actually be prepared to pay for a business banking service. However, I would need that to be a smallish fixed fee rather than a per transaction charge because some of the cheques I receive are fairly small and a per cheque charge would be too high percentagewise.
Free is no good to me if I don't know who has paid.

cottager

HappySad wrote: »

It must be a read headache to have to work out who has paid what from your statement. This is basic and this would be what I will expect Natwest to provide this as how can I tell who has paid and who has not.

On Natwest printed statements you'll have a note of the account name a payment comes from; which may be abbreviated if it's quite long, but we've always found there's more than enough to know who's made it. Online this info won't be included on the short summary (which shows the last 6 transactions): for BACS/FP it'll just be Automated Credit, but the name can be seen on the statement option, including those which have arrived on the current working day.

A payment reference will also be shown if the person/organisation making the payment has included it in their payment instruction (you'd need to ask them to include this if, for example, you wanted them to quote their account details as held with your business), but this part's optional/variable and up to the payer to specify.

On a Saturday or Sunday you'll be able to see anything which is due to come in (or go out, for that matter) on the Monday. As far as Natwest's system is concerned, weekends don't exist -- it's Friday, then it's Monday! You need to bear in mind what you see over a weekend is Monday's situation (or the next working day in the case of a b/holiday), but the available balance shown will take these transactions into account.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

cottager wrote: »

On Natwest printed statements you'll have a note of the account name a payment comes from; which may be abbreviated if it's quite long, but we've always found there's more than enough to know who's made it. Online this info won't be included on the short summary (which shows the last 6 transactions): for BACS/FP it'll just be Automated Credit, but the name can be seen on the statement option, including those which have arrived on the current working day.

A payment reference will also be shown if the person/organisation making the payment has included it in their payment instruction (you'd need to ask them to include this if, for example, you wanted them to quote their account details as held with your business), but this part's optional/variable and up to the payer to specify.

On a Saturday or Sunday you'll be able to see anything which is due to come in (or go out, for that matter) on the Monday. As far as Natwest's system is concerned, weekends don't exist -- it's Friday, then it's Monday! You need to bear in mind what you see over a weekend is Monday's situation (or the next working day in the case of a b/holiday), but the available balance shown will take these transactions into account.

Generally, those references need to be displayed in real time because I provide a regular service each dfew weeks. It's necessary to know before a second visit if the first one has been paid for. Bear in mind that if someone were to pay their credit card this way (as I usually do), it's the section that would contain the 16 digit reference that would need to be seen. I sometimes pay my council tax this way. Again, it's the bit containing the account number. So the bit I am asking to be shown can normally be shown. Indeed, Abbey/Santander used to show it then stopped - which meant me scrapping addressed envelopes with the letters in. The customers who pay this way do have the references in the payment - it's just that Santander stopped displaying them. The payment details (including the reference) are only set up the once. All the customer has to do is to fill in the amount online and click "PAY" then "CONFIRM" or whatever terminology an individual bank uses.

A payment reference tells the service provider who has paid. To truncate or to unduly delay this information (notwithstanding non working days) is negligent IMO.

HappySad

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

Generally, those references need to be displayed in real time because I provide a regular service each dfew weeks. It's necessary to know before a second visit if the first one has been paid for. Bear in mind that if someone were to pay their credit card this way (as I usually do), it's the section that would contain the 16 digit reference that would need to be seen. I sometimes pay my council tax this way. Again, it's the bit containing the account number. So the bit I am asking to be shown can normally be shown. Indeed, Abbey/Santander used to show it then stopped - which meant me scrapping addressed envelopes with the letters in. The customers who pay this way do have the references in the payment - it's just that Santander stopped displaying them. The payment details (including the reference) are only set up the once. All the customer has to do is to fill in the amount online and click "PAY" then "CONFIRM" or whatever terminology an individual bank uses.

A payment reference tells the service provider who has paid. To truncate or to unduly delay this information (notwithstanding non working days) is negligent IMO.

Why on earth did they remove this service where they are giving you less. They must have a technical reason for this. As an ordinary customer they used to show a summary of your payments .. so for the month I could straight away see how much I spent in Sainsbury totalised in a summary part at the buttom of the statement. They offered this service for over a year then stopped with out asking for feedback or stating that it was going to be stopped. I asked for this service back as it really help me to budget and no one knew what I was talking about & never heard about it. Eventually after trying many time calling & visiting local branch... someone said that they will not give you this anymore.

I can imagine that your experience will be the same.. You will complain and complain with no one really listening or even caring about what you have to say.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

HappySad wrote: »

Why on earth did they remove this service where they are giving you less. They must have a technical reason for this. As an ordinary customer they used to show a summary of your payments .. so for the month I could straight away see how much I spent in Sainsbury totalised in a summary part at the buttom of the statement. They offered this service for over a year then stopped with out asking for feedback or stating that it was going to be stopped. I asked for this service back as it really help me to budget and no one knew what I was talking about & never heard about it. Eventually after trying many time calling & visiting local branch... someone said that they will not give you this anymore.

I can imagine that your experience will be the same.. You will complain and complain with no one really listening or even caring about what you have to say.

I suspect you are right.
Maybe they are deliberately crippling it because it is free (within certain limits) and they will eventually set up another service that needs to be paid for.
The bit that really gets to me is the poor communication.
If they had never shown these references that would have been one thing. However, to show the references in real time, let people start gearing their businesses up for it, then remove the facility, is either gross negligence or intentional antagonism.
There are days when I feel quite angry about it. However, my experience is nowhere near as bad as some people's so I just count myself lucky. I have already moved part of my business away from Santander over this one issue. As BACS payments increase and cheques reduce, I can see me moving it all over eventually. I must stress though that I would be reasonably happy to stay with Santander but for this one issue.
I find it unbelievable that something so basic was removed.

cottager

I do agree with you. It seems to me, but it's only a personal view, that banks who haven't always been banks (or some of them anyway) are 'playing' at being banks and not offering what I'd call a 'full service'. For us this would be things like online banking in as real-time as it can be, having a dedicated business manager, good branch support, being able to make Faster Payments (being a sole trader we can use the same online service as personal a/c customers), and other things like the issue you're talking about.

Yours may only be a 'small' detail, but in business something like this is not only vital but commonsense -- what are payment references for, if not to be used! We'd be the same if we had several J Smiths (using your example higher up) consistently paying us for invoices and we didn't know which was which: if you need payments to be identified, the detail should be on your statements/online (and you're quite right of course: a reference only needs to be entered once by the customer, when first setting up the payment arrangement).

We've only ever had our business a/c with Natwest, but I'm sure all the main players would show references by default. By not doing this sort of thing Santander isn't offering a comparable service for its business customers in my view, or demonstrating they really understand their needs. And yet from what one reads they're in a drive to be one of the main players in banking. Well, from comments seen they'd need to shape up a lot more and not just on this issue. I'm afraid at the moment I just don't think of them as a 'real bank'.

martin1018

Hi,

I'm in the process of opening a business bank account.

I have narrowed my choices down to the Co-operative and A&L, as both have Post Office paying in systems, and neither are 'Big Four' banks which I have an aversion to.
My first choice was for the Co-op, for two reasons;
1 - My personal banking is with A&L and I'm concerned that they may link accounts if there were problems in the future.
2- If the FSB rate them they must be half-decent (mustn't they??).

Anyway, when I tried to open an account on Friday they told me that they were accepting no applications for business accounts except from FSB members. They said this was due to having too many applications to cope with so had stopped accepting them! Really?

This is an issue for me as this means the free banking has a cost of £150 FSB membership!

Anyone know what is, or is likely to be, going on?

Has my list been narrowed down to one?

All (relevant) thoughts welcome. Thanks.