Start Up Business Bank Accounts

[mroddjob]

I'm after some advice on setting up a UK start up business account.

After reading a few blogs on various contractor websites I decided to set up an account with Santander online (Start Up Current Account) - it's been nothing but pain so far and no sign of my account being set up soon.

I'm now thinking of sacking them off and setting up with someone else. But who?

After much googling, it would appear many other high street banks are equally as poor, Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC etc:

Santander: Santander Business Bank Account Reviews | Business Bank Accounts | Review Centre
Lloyds: Lloyds TSB Business Bank Account Reviews | Business Bank Accounts | Review Centre
Barclays: Barclays Business Bank Account Reviews | Business Bank Accounts | Review Centre
HSBC: HSBC Business Bank Account Reviews | Business Bank Accounts | Review Centre

So are they are the same? Does anyone have a good story to tell? If so please enlighten me now...

My business banking needs are very simple with minimal transactions but I need to get it set up asap (within next 2 weeks - am I dreaming?), seems like some people are months in after applying and still have no account set up?

[stek]

Cater Allen

[Kenny@MyAccountantFriend]

Cater Allen and Metro bank (depending on if a branch is near you) are both quite good.

[BolshieBastard]

Ignore cater allen, they're rubbish and you're really dealing with Santander call centre staff.

If you join the FSB, you can open a free business bank account with the Co Op. You also get a loyalty bonus of £25 (not a lot I know) every 12 months.

The User Interface is a bit crap but Ive had no problems. I noticed some unathorised transactions on the company card on the account and they reversed these promptly.

[Maslins]

After much googling, it would appear many other high street banks are equally as poor, Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC etc:

When you're a massive corp, inevitably you'll get lots of bad reviews. No realistic way of avoiding a few being grumpy when you have millions of customers. I doubt you'll find a bank where there aren't dozens of negative online reviews.

We were with HSBC, and were pretty happy until their "free forever within certain transaction limits" account became "not free". Moved to Cater Allen and generally happy. The switch itself was a bit of a pain TBH, and one downside of Cater Allen is they seemingly don't properly support faster payments (ie payments in/out take 1-2 working days to arrive, rather than instant as they seem to be with most banks).

If you have any plans to use something like FreeAgent, I'd recommend steering clear of the Co-op. I know their online banking and the seeming randomness/constant changing of the reports it lets you download has proved a nightmare for FreeAgent over the last few years.

[BolshieBastard]

I dont use freeagent but is freeagent so poor it cannot use Excel spreadsheets? Co Op offer other report formats including PDF but I find it hard to beleive it cannot handle Excel files.

I download all my reports in excel and provided these to my accountant, never had a problem. Each to their own though.

[Kenny@MyAccountantFriend]

Free agent can take uploads of bank statements from csv files so it wouldn't be an issue.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

My experience with Santander has been positive so I'm surprised at your problems.

HSBC are quick at opening accounts. As that's important I'd steer clear of Lloyds, TSB, Hbos.

RBS group seemed to be getting their act together lately but have dropped off against in the last month.

If you're in a hurry though, go to the bank you use personally as this normally speeds the process up - unless you're with the ones I'd said to avoid.

[TheFaQQer]

We were with HSBC, and were pretty happy until their "free forever within certain transaction limits" account became "not free".

I'm surprised there wasn't a backlash over this, like there was with Santander.

They tried to introduce fees, but backed down when threatened with a judicial review, IIRC.

[Maslins]

I dont use freeagent but is freeagent so poor it cannot use Excel spreadsheets? Co Op offer other report formats including PDF but I find it hard to beleive it cannot handle Excel files.

I download all my reports in excel and provided these to my accountant, never had a problem. Each to their own though.

Yes it can accept the csv files (basic spreadsheet). Problem as I understood it is that Co-op kept changing the format of these. Eg so for a while the date might be in column A, amount in column B...then they'd tweak it. This would then mean until FreeAgent manually tweaked the software, data would be pulled in badly. From what I understood the Co-op seemed to be doing this fairly frequently.

@FaQQer with HSBC and fees, I believe the argument was they'd never promised the account would be free forever, but at the point I signed up with what I'd expect to be normal usage by us there wouldn't be a charge. They then introduced a flat levy on the account. I know a few people grumbled about it (including myself) but I guess there wasn't enough outrage for them to back down. We moved banks.