Business Bank Account Opened - But How Do I Pay For Company Stuff

[Sausage Surprise]

The cater allen telephone banking is excellent while you wait to get your online access sorted.

[Wanderer]

Cater Allen wont issue any kind of a debit card until the account has been opened for 6 months. In the meantime I expect that there will be significant expenses. The company will have funds after month 1 but no practical way to pay for things.

Am I (as an individual) expected to subsidise the company during this time or is there another way do to things).

If personal money is tight, then pay for it on your own credit card, keep the receipts and then pay off your business expenditure on the credit card out of the companies bank account when you get the statement. If you have a few personal credit cards then it might be useful to earmark one for your business expenses only (not essential, but it keeps things simple).

If your company is spending big and blowing your personal account into overdraft then you can take a director's loan of up to 5,000 out of the company (presuming the company has funds!) and spend this to pay for company expenses. Your accountant will help you account for the director's loan and keep a track of what the balance is. Once you have online banking setup, there is nothing to stop you reimbursing yourself for expenses from the company account as you incur them if you want, though you might want to batch them up to once a week or month to save on admin.

Once you get your online banking setup for Cater Allen and you will be able to pay off your personal credit card statement (used for company expenses) from there. Set a reminder for 6 months time, apply for the Visa Debit card from Cater Allen then switch to putting your company expenses on that directly.

Good luck!

[oversteer]

I have a debit card with my HSBC business account. Seems to work as a regular debit card to me.

Is that a "Commercial card" ?

[CheeseSlice]

I have a debit card with my HSBC business account. Seems to work as a regular debit card to me.

I've got the 'commercial card' with HSBC although it is set up to automatically pay off the balance each month.. haven't seen a debit card

Annual Fee

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I wasn't aware of any kind of debit card for a company bank account (if anyone knows of any let me know). I have a company credit card and was able to apply for this within a week or so of my main account activation.

HSBC provide both a business debit card and a commercial card with their standard business account.

I used to be with Cater Allen and due to the lack of debit card and wanting to make business purchases online, I got myself a business Barclaycard and used that for as many business purchases as possible. I still made some purchases personally and reclaimed them as expenses from my Ltd co. but it always saved on paper work if I could get them with the company credit card.

There was some confusion as to whether or not these transactions had to go on the P11D (my opinion was that they shouldn't as they were specifically purchases that I was making on behalf of my company, with the company credit card and not a credit card that was issued to me as an employee to use for my own business expenses (travel, food etc.)) so you may want to check that with your accountants if you go down that route.