[The Bear]

Anyone had experiece offering BACS payments??

Just added it to my bills, and would like feedback

[windows_chepstow]

Bear,

What do you mean?  I get paid by BACS (Bank automated credit system) by two companies.  I clean, send an invoice and they BACS the payment into my account.

It's not a favourate method of payment of mine, as you have to check your bank statement against a payment and clean.  It's not as obvious as cleaning a property, sending an invoice and receiving a cheque a week later for the work.

They just 'sneak' it into your bank account! 

It's a good method of payment, but to keep track of it, it means your administration has to be on the ball.

[Ian Rochester]

We have had BACs payment facility set up for all our commercial customers for a good while now. 

Recently got domestic customers to start paying this way as well, I used to have to go out collecting but it was taking up too much time and the rounds now are too big and too spread out.

Changing everyone who was out to pay by either cheque or BACS works very well and it means my evenings are free.

The benefit of BACS payments over cheque or cash payments is you don't incur and bank charges for people paying in to your account if you have a business account. 

Downside is cashflow is slow and you tend to have a lot of money outstanding at any one time, whereas when I went collecting we probably collected about 90% of total earnings by the end of the week.  With BACS and cheque payment, the money trickles in over a longer period.

If you have a largish round that is spread over a large area, or if your customers are hard to catch at home, then this is the way to go.

[rosskesava]

We have several large commercial companies pay us by BACS.

We also have the problem of keep having to check to see if the money has gone in the account but we've never had a single problem with it.

One advantage over a cheque is that with a cheque, someone can make a mistake and then the cheque gets returned and the bank charges a horrendous charge for that. We paid £35 for a returned £10 cheque all because the word 'pound' was missing. It read 'Ten only' and I missed it.

Cheers

[The Bear]

Thanks,

I'm going to offer it to residential customers, I don't collect so i'm hoping it gives options to them

[matt]

one of my comercail owes me 7 months money

its all done via BAC's, too be honest i am not a fan