Monzo doesn’t allow company accounts, only personal. Starling has launched accounts for companies but I’m not sure of their features.
You could just use a personal account for business transactions but this makes bookkeeping and accounting a nightmare, and things like tax refunds from HMRC can often only be paid into an account in the name of the business (as I found out a while back when I was due a large VAT refund but was in the middle of switching business accounts so tried to input my personal details and got a telling off).
There are also a few features you might be after in a company account, specifically integration with accounting software, multiple accounts/cards for team members, etc.
They have custom categories This is actually pretty handy as a business to properly categorise transactions so that accounting at the end of the year is just adding up totals. Neither Monzo nor Starling have this yet, and it’s important for a business account.
They also have quite a nice UI with multiple account support, multiple cards coming soon (again, neither Monzo nor Starling have managed this yet, but both will be forced to do so eventually).
Otherwise they’re missing a few things you might expect still (international payments, standing orders), but are quite a good business account, though the complaints on their forum worry me greatly.
I think the problem with their forum is it’s entirely about problems. If you visit the Monzo forums a lot you’ll see a few people post complaints, but they’re dealt with by other members and Monzo staff quickly, and then move down off the front pages by all the other posts about fin-tech, apple pay, amazon wishlists, podcasts, tv shows, apple pay, and more apple pay. If we didn’t have this community here, it might easily look like it was just complaints too.
Yes. With Post Offices closed all around me you have to travel to a small convenience store with one tiny Post Office counter and poorly trained inexperienced staff. This morning it was hell with a queue of 15 people snaking around the shop with one or two customers holding up the queue with parcels when other people wanted to get money out. With two ATMs stolen from our town and not replaced (one in the very same shop now providing post office service) it makes it hard to get cash, yet still needed with 2 local takeaways and the local barber all refusing to take cards. At least with PayPoint there is more outlets and I can go to a store with minimal wait to pay in cash.
2 local takeaways and the local barber all refusing to take cards
Have you asked if they had a look at Square/iZettle? Maybe they’re just stuck behind the times and have this mindset where card reader = expensive nightmare, but that’s no longer the case; the aforementioned providers make it quite easy to get started accepting cards.
The ones I spoke to, one says they had a card machine in the past but the costs of using it ate into their profit and they need cash anyhow to pay staff and suppliers, and it costs time and money to travel to another town to get to the nearest bank. The other openly admitted he had room to fudge his figures and pay less tax on lower earnings when it doesn’t have to all go thru the books.
Oh my god, this. Queues in the post office have been consistently worse than every bank I’ve been in, and only alleviated somewhat because they’ve put in more self-service tills. Sometimes I’m in there for 30-40mins for a counter service. And this is the huge post office in town.
A lot of our post offices have closed and they’ve put a counter in the Spar shop so you have to wait for them to serve shop customers first and then make their way over. Is this happening on the main land as well?
Yeah, here too. But the shop where they’ve done it looks so derelict that I wouldn’t trust them with anything. So I go to the next town where they still have a proper post office (and a branch of about every bank you can think of, but not much else …)
Honestly think the post office should put in some automatic tills outside post offices. We have these things called SAM kiosks back home and you can buy stamps/ weigh parcels, check prices etc. as well as pay fines and bills too. It’s usually located in public places and private condominiums so it operates 24/7. I wish the post office was open beyond 6pm sometimes it’s a mad dash to get there on time
To be honest, I rarely need the post office anymore: I buy and print my postage online. (What’s the deal with weighing parcel? Are scales not common in Singapore?). Parcels get sent with alternative carries anyway, which usually have drop offs in local convenience stores and I have scales to weigh them at home .
The only reason I go to the post office these days, is to send something “signed for”/“special delivery”. Not unsolvable with automatic machines, sure, but I have never seen any machines that allow you to post these sort of things without human interaction.
Personally I use PC2Paper for snail mail; PDF, address and money comes in one side, letter comes out the other side. I think they can do special delivery/registered letters as well.
Interesting idea, but that would extremely rarely be helpful for me: I almost exclusively send letters if I need to send original documents or original signatures. Almost everything else goes through email. For the remaining 2-3 letters a year I’m happy to print and post them myself
This is actually pretty handy as a business to properly categorise transactions so that accounting at the end of the year is just adding up totals. Neither Monzo nor Starling have this yet, and it’s important for a business account.
