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I can’t get hold of a humanoid at my bank at the moment and don’t fancy taking a trip into town just to ask a question so hoped any bankers or small business owners may know the answer.
I am self employed and mostly invoice day rates for consultancy work so until now I run everything through my personal account. Recently I started a small brand which again as projected turnover wasn’t above vat threshold for the time being I just operate on a self employed business.
The question is that I have just received a cheque as payment from a customer and they have made it out to the brand name of the goods I have sold them. They have also spelt the name slightly wrong.
I don’t have a bank account under the brand name so wondered if I would be able to pay this cheque into my standard personal account or not. I have a few purchase and service invoices which show both my name and the brand name.
Thoughts are appreciated,
the bank will not accept it - they are really hot on it being an exact match now
Who do you bank with?
Part of that I can answer.
I get business payments paid into my personal account from time to time. Accountant hates it!
I have a couple of micro businesses with each one having their own bank account. I use Tide, very easy to set up and helps keep things nice and easy for tax calculations. Accountants software connects to the account so there’s very little for me to do.
Banks don’t normally check the names on a cheque, but personally I’d visit the bank to pay it in and explain the situation then. They may want to take photo copies of your documents so I’d take it along.
I should add, if you don’t want to open a business account, HSBC have in the past added a trading name to a personal account of mine.
There are a couple of ways out of this.
1. Call the company and ask them nicely to rewrite the cheque in your name.
or,
2. Create a bank acct for your brand and pay in the cheque to it. (the mis-spelling won't matter*)
edit: If you do decide on course of action 2, be careful (get some advice) about transferring the money from there to your own bank acct.
* one or two letters or so won't matter, but if the brand is called Smith and the cheque's made out to Jones, it obviously will
Hmm. They shouldn't accept it but...
My bank, Natwest, have accepted a cheque with my name spelled incorrectly.
Possibly more helpfully I used to work for Lloyd's looking for fraudulent cheques. We only ever got referred stuff that was over £10k, they didn't bother with smaller stuff. We were verifying signatures though, probably more of a grey area than this...
There are a couple of ways out of this.
1. Call the company and ask them nicely to rewrite the cheque in your name.
or,
2. Create a bank acct for your brand and pay in the cheque to it. (the mis-spelling won’t matter*)
3. Get them to do a bank transfer saving everyone a load of hassle.
This.
What is a cheque?
Visiting a 'bricks & morter' bank.....can't remember the last time I did
Not everyone can do a bank transfer though... There must be a reason they have given him a cheque.
.
For example I cant even though I have internet banking, ever since my bank changed their log in procedure to send a code to my mobile telephone. I have no signal and now cant log in. There is however a post box at the end of my road, I can send cheques.
There must still be plenty of people who just don't have internet banking, my parents spring to mind. To do a transfer they go to a branch, which is no easier than the OP going to his to pay in a cheque. The fact that the cheque is wrong is another matter
I wonder if your bank's mobile app lets you scan cheques? I assume with handwritten cheques it isn't reading the handwriting and is based purely on what you tell it, and then if it gets queried by the otherside? So presumably if they wrote the cheque it wouldn't be disputed and might go through. But open the account in the business name it really will make life simpler.
There is however a post box at the end of my road, I can send cheques.
There must still be plenty of people who just don’t have internet banking, my parents spring to mind. To do a transfer they go to a branch, which is no easier than the OP going to his to pay in a cheque. The fact that the cheque is wrong is another matter
As he's doing "consultancy" type work presumably he's not dealing with the public but B2B - so there will be essentially no real customers who only use cheques - not least because large suppliers, HMRC etc won't take them, or make it very hard to do so.
There must still be plenty of people who just don’t have internet banking, my parents spring to mind. To do a transfer they go to a branch, which is no easier than the OP going to his to pay in a cheque.
It can also be done in minutes by calling the bank
For example I cant even though I have internet banking, ever since my bank changed their log in procedure to send a code to my mobile telephone. I have no signal and now cant log in.
That does appear to be a huge pain, but I suspect extremely unusual. Honestly, I would have changed bank by now if my current one wasn't capable of offering easy online banking. I'm on the verge of switching because my bank doesn't work with google pay.