Sole Trader - best business account ?

[Bagpuss]

Hi,
I have had a business account for the last 3 years with free banking, as long as I pay in cash through the "hole in the wall", i always think I'm going to get mugged doing this so walk into HSBC and pay it into my personal account, then do a transfer.

I had a brief look at the HSBC buisness account website last night and saw that they charge 2.5% for paying cash in ? Is this the same across the board ? If anyone has a good small business account they'd like to recommend, I'd like to hear from you.
Thanks,
Adam/Bagpuss

[Vince442]

If you are a member of the FSB then you get free banking at The Co-operative Bank

I've banked with them for the last 5 years with no problems whatsoever

[Jonny2morsos]

I have accounts that were opened with Alliance & Leicester. Never paid any charges and even been paid a little interest. Cash/cheques can be paid in at any Post Office which happens to be convenient for me. There is a small charge if more than £5k is paid in in cash per month but that has never affected me.

A&L are now of course Santander so I don't know if the same terms apply but worth a look I would say.

[CanvasChris]

Santander Business Account... Totally Free! No limits.... well there are but you would need to do about ten times more business than is possible as a sole trader.

Deposit cash at PO's and post cheques. includes internet banking making it all simple. Don't get paid that much in cash as I suggest bank transfer... even for my customers that collect.

I have two accounts... one for each company I have.

[David]

I use a Santander online business account, no charges even get a bit of interest - a very small bit. It's worked well don't even have a cheque book anymore, haven't needed one.

I seem to be working my way around the banks started with NatWest, moved to Barclays then Bank of Scotland before Santander. All the moves were prompted by increasing charges.

[IFGL]

Yep Santander all the way, you can't beat free, and they will lend at great rates too.

[birdman]

Yep, we have the FSB Coop account. Free banking and we pay in via the Post office, we do get some interest and also an annual bonus of £25 each year. We've never paid any charges at all but of course there is the annual FSB membership fee to take into account. Having said that we also got our chip and pin machine via a deal through the FSB at a very competitive rate as well.

Most of the free bank accounts for the other mainstream banks normally have free headline banking but it is time limited ie for the first year, 2 years or so.

[Bagpuss]

Thanks for the replies, I have a Santander account as well but it annoys me to have to post a wad of cash through the hole in the wall did someone say you can pay it in at the Post Office ? That would suit me,
Thanks,
Adam

[IFGL]

You can pay cash into you Santander account via the post office,

[misterdiy]

Yep, we pay it into the PO however we pay £12.50 a month bank charges. We were getting much more cash per month than their limit so we had to opt for the first rung which is £12.50. Prior to becoming a limited company we were with Alliance & Leicester, which was totally free, but we could not open a new account with them - or all
ter the existing one

[Vix]

I had a really bad experience with Santander. Originally I had one of the original Abbey business accounts which was unlimited free banking indefinitely and all was great until Santander took over. They started sending out not only my cheque & paying in books but also bank cards and pin number to a completely different address whilst swearing blind that they were sending them out to me at the correct address. It took them and me ages to work out what was happening and even then they never sorted the problem and opened me up to potential identity theft. The hardest part was that I couldn't go into a branch and talk to anybody, it all had to be done through call centres. Needless to say I closed the account as soon as I could and moved to a bank where I could go talk to someone face to face if there was a problem (which hasn't happened as of yet touch wood). Sometimes free banking is not always it's cracked up to be!

[IFGL]

You do realise you have a business account manager that will come out and see you if you need them too, you can also go see them at a branch, I have done both, with more than satisfactory results.

All banks make mistakes Nat West tried to take over 5k out of my account, for a cheque I did not wright, it was someone else's cheque, it's a good job there wasn't enough money in there, they still tried to charge for a bounced cheque.