Business account trying to be an accounting software

Monzo Chat Business Banking
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I was happy to open my Monzo Business account but after a few days I realized Monzo is going in the wrong direction with their Business account, they are developing features such as Invoices, Tax pots … but most people are not looking for Monzo to be an accounting software that’s why we already have Xero, FreeAgent, etc and they already do a much better job than Monzo will ever do, because businesses are complicated and require so many different features to have a fully operational accounting software.

In my opinion they should focus on real bank features such as international bank transfers (and not only SEPA, we have clients out of europe too), web access (doing admin on a phone is a nightmare), savings, etc. These are really what is stopping businesses moving to Monzo in my opinion, not the lack of invoice reconciliation from their bank account smartphone app …

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I think the problem is for the likes of us who have accountants and thus use a software package through our accountancy agency it feels like Monzo is building business tools for a new type of client who hasn’t done this before.

For me as much as I would love to jump over to Monzo business I need the basics first, As making tax digital is a massive requirement for me I need my accountancy software integration first. Those are the customers I feel Monzo should focus on.

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I posted something similar in February - I just want a basic bank account first, with the added features coming later. I’d happily pay £5 a month for the account if features were added. I suspect they feel they need to justify the fees by adding features which is why they’re doing it the other way around - building a fully featured account then letting people join, it avoids the backlash over the Monzo Plus offering.

I use FreeAgent for all my logging. I will probably use Pots to keep tax money aside, and monzo.me could potentially be handy (though Im usually invoicing large companies rather than other freelancers) but the thing I most want is having all my banking in my monzo app, and notifications when invoices have been paid/money has been spent.

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What about small businesses or sole traders who don’t really need accounting software or only deal with UK customers and suppliers?

It might not suit your business to have invoicing available but there will be some it does

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I am a sole trader/small business

While you can run a business without those tools it costs you in the long run depending on what kind of person you are.

Accounts software is used by a lot of people, that should be the priority not the few who don’t, for now at least.

If invoicing is the issue there are lots of free invoice software applications out there.

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Yes but as i said there are small businesses and some traders who don’t need that

They’ve put in integrations with some accounts software already so they’re clearly trying to cater for as many people as possible

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But as the vast majority of business users use software, I would rather Monzo focus on software integration with the range of accountancy software packages especially for those of us who are on MTD.

Not the few people that need an invoice every other week for a few quid

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Well I have a very small business which consists of only me doing some consultancy … so I believe I know about this use case, and clearly we need a real accounting software which manages a lot more than invoices. After all that is exactly what FreeAgent is designed for, sole traders and small businesses, and thinking that Monzo will build the same feature set is not realistic.

Of course I’m sure a few people will find these features useful but I think the majority of small business owners will have an accounting software for these need.

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So you don’t think Monzo are looking at the data for what features in app are being used and customer feedback?

Is there anything stopping Monzo being able to do MTD with the invoicing features they have eventually?

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Again as the majority of business users have accountancy software I would rather that a BANK focus on building it’s banking tools and not the tools that most of us are already using.

Also I would imagine people like me who are daily managing my business banking and accountancy software will have a higher input towards Monzo banking tools than someone who just wants to use it for invoicing.

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Tide has similar basic accounting features which I happily ignore. I just want Monzo to offer better FreeAgent integration than everyone else… Realtime rather than periodic and ideally the ability to use the new Open Banking Payments Initiation Service from within FreeAgent

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I don’t yet have a Monzo Business account but I’m on the waiting list. Like others here, I am also using FreeAgent to run my small business accounts and would prefer Monzo focus on simply providing the banking basics first.

I just need an account to receive money into (including foreign funds) and pay money from which then integrates with FreeAgent.

I’ll look after the rest!

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I agree it doesn’t make sense to try and do what something like FreeAgent does. FreeAgent for instance can pull in multiple balances and balance everything up which monzo wouldn’t have visibility over (except for awkwardly pulling in feeds alongside the monzo account). There’s a whole lot of complexity in recording expenses paid from a personal account, calculating VAT and profit and loss etc as well as interfacing with HMRC.

However when I first started as a freelancer my needs were really simple. I needed to invoice clients, mark them as paid and then send my income and expenses to HMRC. I think monzo could do a good job of covering those basic needs. At that stage I certainly wouldn’t have been prepared to pay the eye watering subscription for FreeAgent (which admittedly is excellent and saves me countless hours).

Time tracking per project not sure if it would fit in, but it helps to have it integrated with invoicing, so possibly.

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Maybe I’ve missed something but not seen it mentioned anywhere else… Tax Pots now seem to be live for the business account (at least in the beta app).

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@bzc As a freelancer its far too much to be using an app for this and an app for that (not to count the expense of apps and bookkeeper and accountants etc. I would far rather my phone asked me to categorise and add a photo of a transaction as I spent the money and then it’s done, rather than sitting down and spending terrifying hours trying to tie up long forgotten transactions. keying in invoices asI finish a job and email it to my client as I leave is simple enough and then its not forgotten having my bank recognise the payment and auto reconcile will be amazing. Monzo are hopefully going to disrupt the whole financial burden for me and I can’t wait.

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