Hi,
Im looking for free business banking anyone know of any banks doing this? I heard of someone on here a good while back saying they had got it permenantly through co-op - I think? Cant remember who it was now?...
Cheers
Wrekin
Possibly me but it may have been someone else.
My experiences with free business banking are as follows:-
Started with Abbey/Santander. Up to 100 cheques per month (month is counted from the date in the month when account is opened rather than 1st of the month). Also up to £3k cash permonth. Beyond these limits, 50p per item is charged (or a % of cash). No problem. Those limits will cover most sole traders. The big problems with Abbey/Santander are (a) the generally poor communication and (b) they will not show you the reference numbers that you give customers who pay by bank transfer. (b) will probably become more and more important as cheques are phased out. I put in a formal complaint about it because they used to show the references then they removed them. Although I had few enough BACS payers to be able to track down who had paid, it was awkward at times when a surname and an amount were duplicated e.g. which Smith who pays £20 has the payment come from? The references I supply to customers are their house number (or an abbreviation of their house name) plus their postcode. Clearly, removing these references would cause me a problem as the number of BACS payments increases in the coming years.
So my next move was to open an account with Co-op. This is free but only because I pay to be a member of the FSB. However, even allowing for that it is a very cheap account. For a sole trader, FSB membership costs £100 a year (a bit more for the first year). This is tax deductible so will probably only cost c. £72 in reality. Also, the Co-op pay £25 a year into your account each anniversary making the real cost £47 (it may be a bit more if the £25 has to be taxed - I haven't looked into that yet).
With the Co-op, the BACS references are displayed as are the names of the paying customers. Unfortunately, it can be tricky paying in cash and cheques as they have to be done via a pre-nominated post office. You can nominate up to four. I was going to nominate four POs dotted around my business but you're not meant to do that (I didn't understand why). However, depositing with Abbey/Santander is easy for me as I'm a few minutes walk from a cashpoint. Deposits must be made by ATM or post with them.
So I am now in the situation where I have two business accounts for one business. I use Co-op to receive the bank transfers and Abbey/Santander to deposit cash and cheques via ATM.
Trying to get Santander to understand my predicament was like headbutting a toilet brick wall.
So I gave up.
