Standing orders

flergalwit

This must have been asked before, and indeed there have been threads that have touched on the issue, but I can't find a definitive answer...

How quickly do standing orders go through? I know it used to be 3-5 working days, but am I right in thinking it's now 2 hours, now that Faster Payments have been introduced and apply to SOs too? What happens if the payment date is a bank holiday?

MoneySaverLog

Mine go from LTSB by Faster Payment, think most banks do this now. If the day is a weekend or bank holiday they usually go out the first working day after.

agrinnall

SOs will go by FPS but generally it won't be within 2 hours. The standard process for SOs is that the payments are processed in a window between 02:00 and 06:00 on business days.

flergalwit

Thanks. If you use SOs to shift money between accounts, what is the recommended gap to leave to ensure you don't get overdrawn?

MoneySaverLog

That's a interesting question as I have a set up on mine that goes something like this.

Pay on the 15th or previous working day
16th £550 from Lloyds TSB to HSBC
20th HSBC Current Account to First Direct 1st Account
20th HSBC Current Account to HSBC Regular Saver
6th First Direct 1st Account to First Direct Regular Saver

The above would cater for any bank holidays and weekends within those dates. So I guess I'd allow 5 days in case it's a long weekend to be safe.

Mikeyorks

flergalwit wrote: »

Thanks. If you use SOs to shift money between accounts, what is the recommended gap to leave to ensure you don't get overdrawn?

Depends when in the month you're moving them ..... and what combination of weekends and Bank Holidays you're going to encounter?

Once you've worked it all out and thrown in a bit of contingency ...... you then realise that SOs are a total pain if used for anything that's time critical. As they take every weekend / Bank holiday off ..... and only work nights.

So make sure you have the payee set up and then Login and do it manually. Takes but a couple of minutes and you get 'immediate' FP and it matters not if it's a weekend or a Bank holiday.

agrinnall

Mikeyorks wrote: »

Once you've worked it all out and thrown in a bit of contingency ...... you then realise that SOs are a total pain if used for anything that's time critical. As they take every weekend / Bank holiday off ..... and only work nights.

Entirely agree with this, which is why my reply was based on the theory of SO processing, I don't have any myself so have no practical experience, and can't see any situation where I would bother to have one again. Online banking and FPS have made SOs redundant to me.

pqrdef

flergalwit wrote: »

Thanks. If you use SOs to shift money between accounts, what is the recommended gap to leave to ensure you don't get overdrawn?

5 days seems to cover all eventualities, though anything less can fail.

Mikeyorks

pqrdef wrote: »

5 days seems to cover all eventualities, though anything less can fail.

All the posts over this last Christmas / New Year suggested that is cutting it too fine - if you happen to hit the 1st non working day.

Mikeyorks

agrinnall wrote: »

and can't see any situation where I would bother to have one again.

Ditto. I've only had them when Halifax were running their 12% Regular Saver - and that was the mandatory method of paying from a Halifax account. But it had the benefit they were treated as internal transfers - so didn't have all the disadvantages of external SOs.

Outside of that I've never seen the benefit - they're too inflexible. An online diary + doing an immediate FP leaves you in total control.