Help us understand what features you'd like to see in a Monzo business account!

Monzo Chat Business Banking
184

1 Sole director of a Limited Company
2 My business is simple - but I DO need to receive payments in GBP from my sole customer - an Israeli software company. So IBAN for me is mandatory otherwise I can’t get paid!!
3 I am signed up with Clearsky Accounting - they do everything for me - apart from my actual banking
4 current bank - Cater Allen doesn’t process payments to until the following business day - I find that maddening!!
5 I just love the Monzo way - so instant notifications of payments and the resulting balances is going to be brilliant. Savings Pots for my surplus funds would be good as I won’t pull down all my funds straight away. Pots generally will be useful as I would divert money to cover things like Corporation Tax to make sure it is safely ring fenced for when I need to pay HMRC

Thanks!!
Andy

185
  1. I’m a sole director of a Limited Company. I’m in the publishing industry.
  2. Biggest pain point as a fairly new business is cash flow and accounting. I’d love to have pots for putting aside funds for different expenses (such as tax) and savings (buying ISBN numbers in bulk, or saving for a new laptop). I’d love an app where I could scan in receipts, and eventually set up payroll so that I don’t have to pay for bookkeeping or accounting software as an extra expense.
  3. I’ve not yet found a business account or software that works for me. I think my business is pretty straightforward, I publish books and I get paid 60 days later at the end of each month. I don’t need to invoice anyone, but I do need to pay and save up for things like book covers and editing. My income is minimal at the moment (I’ve been running just a couple of months), but I’m set to turn a 7 figure income by the end of the year. So I need to get things right.
  4. I’ve tried Sage, Quickbooks, Counting Up, all are too complex for my business needs and I’d end up paying for a lot of features I would never use.
  5. I spent 3 months setting up a business account through a high street bank. I spent hours in meetings the branch manager and on hold as I went through the setup process to a foreign call centre. They made me do projections and forecasts just to set up the account and there wasn’t a dedicated manager. That was when I discovered Monzo and left high street banking for good. It was hugely frustrating, a complete waste of valuable time, and I ended up telling them to close the account the day they finally opened it.
  6. The most important feature for me is being able to make and receive international payments. The high street bank were going to charge a huge fee for this, and the CountingUp app didn’t do international payments. All of my payments are in dollars (a minimal amount in Euros).

Other things that would be great - my accountant being able to access the account details or downloading data directly from the account - especially for tax returns or applying for a mortgage.

It would be a huge bonus to offer something like Paypal does - Paypal Working Capital. If I could access cash upfront I could grow my business faster, but since I don’t have a set income each month, it would be difficult to do something as rigid as a loan with specific direct debit amounts. Some months I’ll earn more than others, and I can also see from my publishing dashboard what sales I’ve made and how much I’ll receive 60 days later.

If you could create a specific account for authors/publishers that linked in with things like Book Report that would fill a huge niche that’s not currently being met.

186

I’m very much waiting for your business account, your personal account is great to me so far and I like using it.

  • What do you do? Are you a sole proprietor, contractor, limited company?
    I am a contractor but currently building my own business apart of it.

  • What are the big pain points in managing your business finances? (think about things like invoices, expenses, payroll, taxes, etc.)
    Putting money aside for tax & VAT. Managing commission money I charge and paying subscontractors.

  • What tools do you currently use to manage your business finances?
    I use freeagent for my contracting, it’s ok but the feed is updated with 24 hours delay

  • What do you like / dislike about your current business bank account?
    Unclear fees; Delay in seeing my expenses; Reference field very limited when making a transfer;

  • If you could request one key feature for your business current account, what would it be? Are there any other features you look for in a BCA?
    Cost effective international payments! I have subcontactors and clients anywhere in the world and bank transfer charges (£22 per transaction) and currency rates are simply ripping off which makes it very uneffective to use bank transfers for smaller amount payments. I need to use paypal currently (because it charges percent, not a fixed fee and supports multi-currency) which is also expensive and me and my subscontractors don’t like at all and which has its own limitations.

It’ll be great to have same principle with international bank transfers as are with money withdrawal/ payments abroad.
Or even better I would welcome some kind of internationally viable marketplace.

187

Started using my Monzo Business Account and there are a few things that I would like to see added in the future. Right now it seems to be a carbon copy of the personal account, which is to be expected at this stage. Here’s what I would like to see:

Built-in accounting features I don’t do anything fancy with my accounts and it more or less comprises of my bank transactions every month. The ability to categorise each transaction, add an invoice and have some sort of reporting and running totals for profit and loss, earnings for tax, tax due, etc. Have a similar thing with the Coconut business banking app and would like to see this implemented.

Improved categorisation of transactions So far just the standard categories for personal transactions are available, but would like to see a more varied range of options suitable for a business.

Tax reporting This ties in with the earlier suggestion for accounting. Having the ability to see how much tax you owe at a glance with a basic view showing earnings and expenses for the tax year. Plus the ability to view more in depth reports such as profit and loss statement, etc. Also a report that can be used to fill in your self assessment tax return that can include all your income and expenses for the tax year. Coconut has this and makes it quick and easy to do your tax return.

Integration with accounting software At the moment I use Quickbooks until someone can include a fully integrated way of doing accounts within a banking app. Others may use Xero, Sage, Freeagent, etc. So the ability to pull your transactions into these services would be useful.

Separate payment information I imagine this is on the cards and others have mentioned it, but I have a list of all my personal payment history in the business account. Obviously payments made via the business account would be to different payees so I wouldn’t need to see any of the personal ones, plus it confuses things.

A quick and easy way to transfer funds to your personal account I presume that when I come to pay myself each week I will have to setup a standard payment. Seeing as Monzo owns both accounts it would be easier if you could implement some way to transfer funds between accounts quickly and easily without having to process it as a normal payment.

Waive the £5 fee No objection to paying a fee to use the account but for the limited trial it should be waived as others have stated.

Different coloured card Hot coral is fine for the trial but would like to see a different coloured card in the future. Having two the same makes it a bit difficult to pull the right one out or to select the correct one when using Apple Pay.

5 Likes
188
  1. What do you do? Are you a sole proprietor, contractor, limited company?
    Hi, I run a Limited Company called Successful Women delivering training, networking and awards for Women in the South West
  2. What are the big pain points in managing your business finances? (think about things like invoices, expenses, payroll, taxes, etc.)
    Knowing instantly when people have paid would be useful as well as interest on the monies in the accounts
  3. What tools do you currently use to manage your business finances?
    The main tool is Quick books, for invoices, memberships, bills & expenses
  4. What do you like / dislike about your current business bank account?
    I like the syncing of my current business account through Quick Books
  5. If you could request one key feature for your business current account, what would it be?
    Linking to Quick Books
    Are there any other features you look for in a BCA?
    Ease of response if issues, but to be honest I haven’t had any, always in credit and no cash flow issues.
189

  1. What do you do? Are you a sole proprietor, contractor, limited company?
    Online and onsite coach

  2. What are the big pain points in managing your business finances? (think about things like invoices, expenses, payroll, taxes, etc.)
    VAT, INVOICING - so sending out an invoice, the client paying for it on a link and then it automatically collecting into the account (or chasing it down)

  3. What tools do you currently use to manage your business finances?
    Tide.co

  4. What do you like / dislike about your current business bank account?
    It’s good - but I’m a Monzo investor so ill be moving over

  5. If you could request one key feature for your business current account, what would it be? Are there any other features you look for in a BCA?
    sending invoices and the customer paying directly through a link stright into the bank account

190

If you weren’t VAT registered or have a payroll then a simple banking app could do the job. However MtD starts in April for VAT so Monzo would need to provide HMRC recognised software.

191

Why? Monzo provide a bank account. Accounting software should provide MTD functionality, and Monzo should provide a feed to the accounting software. IMHO. Interested as to why you think a bank account should double for accountancy?

1 Like
192

Because Monzo :woman_shrugging:

Just because things traditionally have been separate, doesn’t mean they have to be. I can definitely see the case for incorporating some elements in. Especially for tiny businesses with only a few transactions, paying for accountancy software wouldn’t make sense for them

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193

I don’t, it was in response to kennygrant’s question

kennygrantMondo Alpha

For all those mentioning Xero, Freeagent etc, would you need Xero if your business bank account offered similar facilities?

194

I’m trying to imagine doing xero style bank reconciliation on my tiny phone screen. I think I need to lie down :cold_sweat:

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195

@anon2919395: in a perfect world no I wouldn’t need freeagent but Monzo won’t be able to offer an equivalent service to freeagent or features any time soon. So if Monzo want people to start using them, people have to be able to continue their existing accounting until such time as they do. This means offering the ability to sync their bank statements with freeagent, Xero etc. Otherwise Monzo are making people’s lives harder

196

@Rat_au_van. I agree :grinning: , I’d want to see Monzo offer a website to manage accounts too. A phone interface isn’t going to cut it

3 Likes
197

Monzo’s plan is to be the core in an ecosystem of collaborating companies. No way they’re going to build serious accounting functionalities in the app.

2 Likes
198

Just discovered that I can’t attach PDF receipts to transactions. Every electronic receipt I receive for my business expenditure, bar none, is a PDF. This has been requested elsewhere on the forums, but for business accounts surely this is an absolute must-have. Any paper receipts I have are also scanned to PDF, and I’m certainly not going to start converting everything I receive to JPG or similar. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

5 Likes
199

Yes, PDFs are essential since many invoices end up being multi-page.

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200

Not sure if it’s been said, but it would appear that account details are not appearing on invoices sent from within Monzo!

1 Like
201

Hey Mark - how do you find Futrli?

202
  • What do you do? Are you a sole proprietor, contractor, limited company?

Building Contractor - Limited

  • What are the big pain points in managing your business finances? (think about things like invoices, expenses, payroll, taxes, etc.)

We don’t have too many pain points but I would say keeping track of monthly spending with different suppliers and tax prediction are the main issues. We did try tracking expenses with an app but it got to complicated with materials returned and credits. Most of our monthly spending is through supplier credit accounts.

  • What tools do you currently use to manage your business finances?

Currently we use Starling for banking and an app called Joist for estimates and invoices which has been a game changer for us. I still have a Barclays account but only because I have a long trading history with them which is useful for account applications.

  • What do you like / dislike about your current business bank account?

Starling is good and there isn’t really anything I would change. A additional feature would be custom categories so that we can categorise tools, materials, labour etc so that I have an ongoing breakdown of what’s being spent within each area.

  • If you could request one key feature for your business current account, what would it be? Are there any other features you look for in a BCA?

As I mentioned before custom categories would be great and real time profit and loss and basic tax prediction so that we would could put by a percentage into a pot. I’m not fussed about invoicing within the app but maybe a link to Joist for example could be beneficial.

203

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD:

Off the bat add multiple account holders and cards.

Please also allow for receipt of international payments.