[clarkson]

   Hi planning to go big into domestic next year as only play at it at the moment have been strictly commercial until now but having just been bumped for 5 grand and most contracts at 60-90 day payment i think the time has come to start door knocking proper in the spring.

my question is about banking and collection.

 which banks let you cash the most cheques/cash without charges and quarterly admin fees. i remember someone on here got free for life business account cant find the thread.

 Also who uses internet collection i.e dd bank standing order,paypal. what do you use and any tips for setting up.

thanks a lot

john

ps i will probably have to use a business account as VAT registered.

[darren clarke]

barclays are useless,  i get 2 of everything, paying books, cheque books and bank cards  and neither is in the right name

[CLEANCARE WC]

the alliance and leicester bus acc was free for life, now merging with santander. might not be any good for you because the statements are just ref numbers no custy details. unless your name is NEO you may have a headache discerning whos paid what... but its free

[clarkson]

  cheers guys

   i was thinking santander as well.  doesnt have to be free though just not  ridiculous.

   anyone any tips of  referencing payments in?

   cheques will be ok because we can balance the books before paying them in. but direct payments as you say maybe difficult.

  cheers

  john

[Sir Squeaky]

If you look up the independant unbiased reviews (such as Which) you'll read that Santander are the worst of all.

[Mike #1]

all bank charges are tax deductable i use bank of scotland no probs in 2yrs

[clarkson]

  Hi do bank of scotland reference payments in  and do you any of your customers pay remotely.

  cheers

  john

[Mike #1]

i have  a few who pay via bacs payments and as long as custy attachs a reference it will show on bank statements , also you get a commercial card with a £500 monthly limit which you repay the balance each month which means i can track all my outgoings on card statement

[irving]

I use RBS, very good, customers paying by cheque, I add 20%. I use postcards with my bank details on and half my customers are using it!

[Tom White]

all bank charges are tax deductable i use bank of scotland no probs in 2yrs

So, you spend £1 on your business, but that doesn't mean you pay £1 less on your tax bill.  It just means your profit is reduced by £1.

And you're taxed on your profit.

Think about it.

[Paul Coleman]

  cheers guys

   i was thinking santander as well.  doesnt have to be free though just not  ridiculous.

   anyone any tips of  referencing payments in?

   cheques will be ok because we can balance the books before paying them in. but direct payments as you say maybe difficult.

  cheers

  john

100 cheques a month free. 50p per cheque per month thereafter.  SDantander won't show the references.  No problem with commercial customers as where a domestic customer's surname would appear is where the company name appears.  I ask domestic customers to use <housenumber or first 4 letters of housename + postcode>.  Santander used to show this but stopped without warning.  I could usually work out who a payment came from by the surname and amount but sometimes these are duplicated (e.g. 3 Smiths all paying £20).  So I went to the Co-op.  Co-op business banking free if a member of FSB.  They show all the references.  So I use two business accounts for one business now as it's the most convenient way for me to work.

[ants]

Put checks in ur personal bank a/c, keep a count of amount then write ur business a cheque for amount paid in,say every £200 or so.
That way u only get charged for 1 cheque.

[♠Winp®oClean♠]

all bank charges are tax deductable i use bank of scotland no probs in 2yrs

So, you spend £1 on your business, but that doesn't mean you pay £1 less on your tax bill.  It just means your profit is reduced by £1.

And you're taxed on your profit.

Think about it.

Yeah, I think he knows that Tosh. It's still referred to as "tax deductible" :

[rosskesava]

I use the Co-Op bank. There's not many branches but you can pay in at any PO.

When I asked about business transactions and cheques, they said it don't matter how many cheques I pay in.

To date, I never been charged a penny in bank charges and I got a totally free of any charges £300 overdraught and a debit card.

I was with Lloyds ( the Urine Removing bank ) and I was paying £20 - £25 a month charges as a sole trader plus the service was like what comes out of a dogs behind after eating a dead rat that had been rotting in the gutter for weeks in the middle of summer. I had been a customer of their for 30+ years but that means nothing when a customer gets year the wrong when writing a cheque and I get upset at the £35 bank charge to me.

Customer service - sorry Lloyds but your call centre in India was a pathetic waste of time. Go down your local branch, all you speak to is someone who quotes verbatim from a computer screen. Complain, and all you get back in the post is a list of bank charges.

Yes, this is an anti Lloyds gripe. 2 years with the Co-Op, not a single problem or bank charge despite twice having made mistakes when writing the cheques out. I had spelt 'August' wrong. The Co-Op phoned me up to suggest re writing the cheques and cancelling the originals. How about that then Mr Lloyds?

Stuff Lloyds.

[bobby p]

i started 2years ago ,using my HSBC personal account but a snotty cow at the branch rang me up once i paid in a few cheques ( 3 !) so i  started paying them in at a different branch- all okay  until the WISEGUY manager was on the counter one time and he got sarcastic and such a smarmey bugger too. Actually he rang me yet again yesterday(he must have made a note about me payin in 1 or 2 cheques) but i brushed him off .

 so i opened 2  building society personal acounts ,nationwide and halifax . ive had these open  about 6 months and not once has a cashier raised an eyebrow about paying in cheques . 

(its all very well opening a proper business account but it costs dearly as Rosskesava says)

 

[Ian Rochester]

Santander DO show references, we've been using them for about 4 years and providing you pay in £1000/month banking is free and you even get interest on your account.

We bank 100+ cheques with them every week and get about the same number of people who pay direct into the account via BACS transfers, we ask them to put the first line of their address on the reference and it always shows up both when going on line to look at the account (which we do daily) and on the printed statement.

The beauty of Santander (and I think Coop are the same) is you just go to any post office and pay it in over the counter, which we do on a saturday when the other banks are closed.

[Paul Coleman]

Santander DO show references, we've been using them for about 4 years and providing you pay in £1000/month banking is free and you even get interest on your account.

Ian.  If Santander have started showing the references it must be very recent.  Until about two or three years ago, they didn't show them until after the end of a calendar month in an archive.  I phoned a few times to ask about the possibility of showing them in real time.  Eventually (they had done a major update at the time) they started showing them in real time.  I started to gear up for converting my customers over.  Then the references disappeared completely.  No archive.  Nothing.
I'm not sure which bit you are calling the "reference".
I have been getting the following info in the last couple of years:

<DATE>."FASTER PAYMENT RECEIPT REF<customer name><amount><balance>

Any reference I give the customer to quote fails to be displayed.  For commercial jobs, the company name appears where <customer name> is so not such an issue for those jobs.
Personally, I don't call that a reference.  Granted you can usually work out who the money is from but that's not always possible or practical for me where there are duplicate surnames paying identical amounts.  That's why I get them to quote a more specific reference related to their address.  That's also why I now have BACS payments made to a separate account.
Perhaps you are referring to the customer name as the reference.
I don't know if any of your customers bank with "IF" (Intelligent Finance) but when a payment comes in from them, they (IF) don't even show the customer surname.  Instead they show something that, to me, is a meaningless string of alphanumeric characters.  However, the reference relating to the customer address is supplied.  So a Santander business person receiving a payment from an IF customer will receive neither the customer surname nor the supplied reference.  If we are all to be forced onto electrionic transactions eventually, these outfits really need to get their arses in gear and show some consistency.
My issue with Santander is they keep making changes that to them are small but to a customer can make a big difference.  They give no warning of such changes and it can take a year to even get someone to admit that such a change has even happened.  However, Santander make it easy for me to make manual deposits.  I live near a branch.  I can make cash and cheque deposits at the ATM 24/7 free of charge (within the limits).  That is the only reason I do any business with them.

I've just re-read your post.  You say you can deposit to Santander at post offices.  This tells me that you may have been on another system previously (perhaps A & L or Bradford & Bingley??).  Maybe part of their old system has been kept going.  If you are ever fully migrated across to Santander's own system (through which I came) then you may see some changes.  I am with Santander pretty much by default having been an Abbey National, then Abbey customer for many years.

[Mike #1]

all bank charges are tax deductable i use bank of scotland no probs in 2yrs

So, you spend £1 on your business, but that doesn't mean you pay £1 less on your tax bill.  It just means your profit is reduced by £1.

And you're taxed on your profit.

Think about it.




true tosh but most of us have to pay i would rather be with a bank i trust i have my personal accounts with the halifax same group HBOS  its eaiser for me to walk in one bank and pay in what i need rather than messing on going to 2 places , unlike santander who have a really bad rep