I've been using Abbey for years. They are free within certain limits and the depositing is easyt as it's done 24/7 by cashpoint. I fiond that the big drawback is that they will not supply the BACS reference numbers that you give to the customers. Therefore, not much good if you have a lot of customers paying by bank transfer. I am switching to the Co-op because of this. Co-op is free as I'm a member of FSB. Deposits not so easy but at least they supply those references. Also, you can nominate up to four post offices so I'm nominating four sub offices dotted around my business.
dont they have a reference box, like most internet banking systems so people can simply input house number and postcode ..as a ref?
They do not display this information to the recipient (you). I've been nagging them for years to display it in real time. They only used to give this info after the end of the accounting month on the paper statement or in an online archive. They even stopped doing this at the start of this year. Apparently Abbey expect people to run their businesses without knowing which customers have paid by BACS. In reality, the account holder's name and the amount (obviously) are displayed so, for a small business, it is usually possible to determine who the payer is. However, it has stopped me from expanding the BACS part of my business because even as a small business, I was starting to get duplications with surnames and amounts.