Best account for ltd business paid in Euros

paco_3

Hello everyone,

I am just in the process of setting up a new business. My main clients are based in Germany and will be paying in Euro.

What is the best way to organise this?

I have been advised to use Cater Allen and to have 2 bank accounts. One in Euro and one in Sterling. However, that seems costly and you have to have a minimum amount of £5000 in each account.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Stuart.

paddyrg

paco wrote: »

Hello everyone,

I am just in the process of setting up a new business. My main clients are based in Germany and will be paying in Euro.

What is the best way to organise this?

I have been advised to use Cater Allen and to have 2 bank accounts. One in Euro and one in Sterling. However, that seems costly and you have to have a minimum amount of £5000 in each account.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Stuart.

Are you spending in Euros or Pounds? If all your spending is in sterling, just keep a sterling account and have the cash converted on transfer. Just one set of account fees that way, and you won't forever be anxious about the EUR/GBP exchange rate, just take the hit on the transfer day :-)

paco_3

I will be spending in Pounds. I would prefer a sterling account but if I got paid in Euros the charges are quite high. Nobody seems to offer this service without big charges.

Mistral001

There are various threads in the past on this subject so have a search.

Remember that there are electronic transfer charges as well. These are usually charged per transaction and not as a %. These can work out quite high if the amounts being transferred each time are below about £200 in my experience. So you ned to check these out as well. Often banks in UK will have sister banks in other countries and do not charge for electronic transfers between each other so that can be a big advantage.

Wywth

What happend to the original offer of the business UK partner to pay you in GBP?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3733905

paco_3

I have checked on other threads but they are mostly old. I will keep looking though.

Doesn't having 2 business bank accounts mean double the problems and costs. I just want to invoice say once per month and get the money paid directly from their account in Europe to my bank account in the UK.

I have looked into transferwise also. Maybe this is a solution?

Wywth

I think HSBC charge £8 per transaction (for amounts over £100 equiv)

paco_3

Thanks for the information Wywth.

For the last year I have been an employee of the UK business but worked for the German parent company. However, that has created a terrible mess with taxation and NI. So my year contract has nearly finished and I don't want to continue how it is now. I basically want to cut out the middle man and control my tax myself.

Thanks again,
Stuart

Mistral001

Wywth wrote: »

What happend to the original offer of the business UK partner to pay you in GBP?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3733905

Paco

From that post you have spent the last year living in Germany. Are you returning to UK?

trailingspouse

Our main clients are based in the Euro zone too. We operate a normal sterling bank account in the UK, and yes we're affected by changes in the exchange rate. We've offset this by arranging for one client to pay us in Euros (very good at the moment!), and another one to pay us in sterling. Swings and roundabouts.

BenjaG

Several of the businesses I am advising have a large part of their sales and supplies in the Euro zone. One of them banks with HSBC but is too small to make the costly "HSBC net" solution work. Instead they opened through HSBC UK an account with HSBC France with Ely online banking and VISA business credit cards. It works very well and is relatively cheap.

The other business took the pain to go to Germany and open a small business account with Commerzbank. Very good service and very cheap internet banking. It also allows to pay VAT in Germany by direct debit and to set-up a Paypal account with direct debit, therefore accounting for individual transactions.