Reply to: What is the cheapest way to pay sub-contractor abroad

[Lumiere]

I have used the following for several large transactions to the EU from UK. Works well, saves a bundle in fees and you get the best rate because no money is actually being transferred!:

TransferWise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting, never heard of them before, bookmarked.
Sadly the country I need to send money to is not supported and not sure how it would work with limited company anyway.

[infosec]

I have used the following for several large transactions to the EU from UK. Works well, saves a bundle in fees and you get the best rate because no money is actually being transferred!:

TransferWise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Lumiere]

Could you negotiate with the sub-contractor to receive fewer invoices or make fewer payments? E.g. if they are invoicing every 30 days with 30 day payment terms, you could arrange to pay invoice 1 and 2 immediately after invoice 2 is received. If they are willing to extend 60 days of credit to you, you could potentially pay all 3 monthly invoices with one payment.

Yes, I've already negotiated that. I asked them to issue invoices only when the total amount due reaches a certain amount.

Looks like I'll just take the hit, if there is no simple option to get better fees/exchange rate.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

Could you negotiate with the sub-contractor to receive fewer invoices or make fewer payments? E.g. if they are invoicing every 30 days with 30 day payment terms, you could arrange to pay invoice 1 and 2 immediately after invoice 2 is received. If they are willing to extend 60 days of credit to you, you could potentially pay all 3 monthly invoices with one payment.

[d000hg]

Sort that!

Unless the costs wipe out his margins, it doesn't really matter.

Try to pay your people as infrequently as possible. Are you engaging a company or hiring individual freelancers directly?

[northernladuk]

Sort out what exactly ?
I can pay it from my HSBC account at any point, I am just checking if there are any other options to minimise the costs ..

Sort that!

[Lumiere]

Don't want to be rude but why the hell didn't you sort this out BEFORE you outsourced the work?

Sort out what exactly ?
I can pay it from my HSBC account at any point, I am just checking if there are any other options to minimise the costs ..

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

That would be the easiest, but I though the money should come out of the company bank account ? I can't just transfer money to my personal paypal and pay the company invoice from there, or can I ?

Set up a business PayPal account. Or just accept that you're going to lose a few hundred quid in charges - that's the cost of doing business I guess. Presumably you're still making a decent margin on the sub-contracted work or is it really that tight?

[northernladuk]

Don't want to be rude but why the hell didn't you sort this out BEFORE you outsourced the work?

[d000hg]

Are you sure it's £24 per international payment? I paid £17 to send money to Russia.

If you are sending multiple payments per month, you could sign up for HSBCnet instead of using online banking. Instead of £6/month it's £15 but your fees on each payment are lower.

You could also look at using a different bank, just for this stuff, as the fees vary quite a bit.

What I prefer to do is try to make sure payments are at least $400, preferably $1000+, since the fees are the same. It's really an unavoidable cost of business and I can't be bothered mucking about with 3rd-party providers other than PayPal.

[Lumiere]

Just checked, it looks that they can't receive money on paypal there, only send.

[eek]

FTFY?

I know enough scare stories over the years that I would never recommend them

[SimonMac]

Western Union?

FTFY?

[eek]

That would be the easiest, but I though the money should come out of the company bank account ? I can't just transfer money to my personal paypal and pay the company invoice from there, or can I ?

Why not? You could also open a company paypal account...

[Lumiere]

Paypal?

That would be the easiest, but I though the money should come out of the company bank account ? I can't just transfer money to my personal paypal and pay the company invoice from there, or can I ?