I would definitely need accounting software integration with Quickbooks Self Employed and/or Sage.
However, if you provided categorising of transactions, plus year end profit/loss reports, plus year end Tax Reports, this would negate the need for many users like myself to use QBSE.
Also, with MTD here now, future VAT handling would be essential if you were looking to take on report generation too. Not something I currently use, but in a year or two I might.
I don’t need anything such as invoicing etc just as long as it has FreeAgent integration and I can still receive payments by the usual means and Stripe etc. All my invoicing, categories and taxes etc is handled by FreeAgent
I would be SO happy just to have improved IFTTT integration. I really want a simple custom notes field that I can add project codes for my company’s internal use. The Monzo current account IFTTT trigger does capture the notes field/ingredient however it does this before you get a chance to fill in the notes and it does not update the generated spreadsheet with new information.
This is a small detail but it would make custom integrations considerably more useful for us.
Hey @TaffyApple! We don’t have a solid date just yet, but we’re working on it! We’ll definitely be able to offer accounts later in the year, but we’re hoping to give a lot more detail really soon, so keep your eyes peeled
Hi Jack, thanks for the response and I understand that you want to get it right, I really hope it has everything I need and works for me as I’m so ready to move right now.
What would be nice when the time is right is to find out about the Monthly Account Fees and also the fees for using the account for payments and deposits etc
Xero is an absolute must for us, that’s the main one, so that our accountants have access to our feed.
Everything else is “would be nice”. The only other thing that would give me hesitation before moving from Barclays would be a “group payments” feature to easily pay a set of people (we have two use cases, one is paying employees monthly based on payroll figures.)
Yes Xero integration would be useful. But tbh Xero is only good for Vat, tax, payroll and submitting accounts. Nothing crazy for our use case.
What I still find super annoying is that I can’t generate payroll and pension and the payments be made automatically. Still manual. How does this scale???
If an account could process my vat, pension and payroll and make the payments automatically that would be ace. May exist already.
We also use transferwise for overseas payments and tide to have team cards ( our team buys a lot of lab ware and hardware). Currently I am a bottle neck for bank transfers. If they could make bank transfers that would also save me heaps of time.
Absolutely this - I agree with @caspararemi here. There seems to be a temptation from neo-banks to try and recreate business banking (a good opportunity as incumbents have low Net Promoter scores) but ALSO try and be the invoicing/accounting/book-keeping platform like Freeagent and Xero which are a better served-market and have higher NPS. Essentially, it’s not what we need fixed
To expand, here is a list of things I find useful in Freeagent that a banking app wouldn’t do:
Templated invoicing, line items added from a product/service catalogue
Automatic, recurring invoicing potentially using dynamic data (hours/days worked that week/month)
Emailing said invoices from the platform, with templated messaging, and emailing auto-follow ups when invoices are overdue.
3rd party access to accountant (better to have access to the books only, rather than the bank account)
Detailed “health of the business” reporting tools, including detailed cashflow analytics, expense analysis, balance sheets, etc.
MakeTaxDigital compatibility, starting with VAT returns submitted online to HRMC now.
Conversely, here is a list of things I think my business bank should offer but my present one does not, and my accounting package never will:
Decent overdraft limit with sane APR %
Business credit card with same
Free foreign transactions
Easy VAT + Corp Tax budgeting (pots) (Freeagent’s “tax timeline” is great but manual work required to keep the funds aside).
Marketplace with 3rd party merchants for various insurance, workplace pensions, 3rd party business savings account, etc.
Instant push notifications when money arrives/leaves.
Open API to allow 3rd parties to access banking data, (eg. FundingCircle for a business loan).
Going for something new & innovative is great and I look forward to it, but starting with the biggest pain points of incumbent business banking is probably prudent!
PS. I’m an independent contractor through a limited company.
I am looking at setting up a Ltd company, and I use a product called WHMCS for all the invoicing email etc, so would only need to sort corp tax, dividends, as wouldn’t be giving myself a wage or pay VAT (would when reach the required threshold).
Hi, I think what Monzo is doing is fantastic, keep up the good work. We set up a property development company recently and have found our existing business account a tad awkward. On your proposed business account, is there going to be a cap on the size of invoice the business can pay or amount of money it can transfer?
Hi I need to receive payments from foreign banks. This can pounds, aud, euros, dollars etc. All my income comes from Amazon and they pay from America so I need the IBAN option or the bank account would be useless to me. It’s ALL I really need it for - to get paid.
I am using Transferwise for some payments but they can’t do everything so if I was to switch I’d need a bank that could receive all my income. Secondary I need a card linked to the account where I can pay for marketing.
The only feature I’d require is accounting software integration. Currently, my business transactions are scraped from a legacy bank once a day (via Yodlee) and pushed into FreeAgent. Simply having this happen in real-time would be a huge improvement.
I wouldn’t want to see Monzo move away from banking and into actually providing accountancy services (invoicing, taxation etc.).
For me International payments / foreign exchange is the biggie.
I currently sell courses/ebooks online in USD (despite being based in the UK). Stripe converts sales income to GBP and pays it into my UK Business bank account.
I also pay for a lot of services which are US based (and charge in USD): things like mailing list providers, hosting etc. and need to be able to pay these invoices from my business account.
My current business bank provider charges a significant fee for foreign currency transactions so I’d welcome a competitive take on this from Monzo!