What's in your business toolbox?

Banking Business Banking
1

I’m curious for anyone running a small business, what’s in their toolkit in terms of banking, payment processing etc.

I’m involved in 3 businesses and a charity. In the businesses, they all pretty much use the same set up -

  • Starling Bank as the current account
  • Stripe for online card payments
  • GoCardless for online subscriptions

In one of the businesses, on the very rare occasion we need to take card payment in person, we use Sumup, and we also have a Santander savings account.

So, what’s in your financial toolbox?

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2

I use some of the same services - Starling business account, Stripe and SumUp. I currently use Waveapps for accounting but, since they’ve made it clear they don’t want customers outside the US and Canada, I’m looking to switch that to the Starling Business Toolkit. I have a free 5-year subscription and recently took part in a Google Meet with a couple of the team to give some feedback and ideas.

4

Interesting on both parts! I did trial the Starling toolkit out of curiosity, but found it quite limiting compared to some other packages. We use QuickFile, which also offers a Starling and Mettle feed.

What was the attraction with Mettle @Johnny? Don’t see many people using these, so would be interesting to get your view on them too.

I didn’t think this was needed, given it’s in the Business Banking category?

6

Point taken. Consider it done :+1:

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10

Anything in specifics? I was hoping to make bookkeeping a little easier and go via this route

I don’t suppose corporate tax/VAT estimation was brought up at all? Providing the meeting wasn’t under an NDA :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

11

It was a while ago I tried it, so it may well have changed.

But things like -

  • Only supporting one VAT scheme (cash I believe)
  • Couldn’t change the email address on invoices (so it showed by personal one rather than a business one)
  • No option for payment methods (like paying by card)
  • No option to account for transactions outside of Starling

And a few others.

In my mind, not worth the £7 a month (or however much it is now), when accounting packages are available with many more features for less.

As I said, things may, and probably have, changed. No harm in giving it a go though. I can see how it would work well for some small businesses

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I know it handles VAT but I’m not registered, so can’t comment much on this feature. The main thing I want that has stopped me from switching across from Wave is recurring invoices. With Wave, I can set up an invoice and have it automatically sent to the customer every month, quarter, year, etc. I don’t even need to think about it. With the Toolkit, generating invoices is a manual process. I’m hoping this gets added soon.

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14

The combination of Starling and Waveapps works fine for my needs - I had a look at FreeAgent, Xero and Quickbooks but Wave ticked every box (and it’s free). It’s only their recent changes that affect non-US and Canada customers that has me looking elsewhere.

I’ll have a look at Mettle though.