Although I have mentioned it before, I wanted to reiterate my goal as a bookkeeper. As it pertains to your company’s profits, my focus is on reducing your expenses. There are many great blogs and podcasts out there that focus on increasing your sales, and improving your marketing efforts. Although I may touch on these from time to time, it’s just not what I excel at. What I’m great at is finding ways to save money on business expenses.One of the big expenses is bank fees. Now, it’s not big because of the percentage of your overall budget. Instead, I believe it’s mentally big, because paying countless fees, without seeing any real value, becomes very frustrating over time. If you are a very small business, having to pay up to $100/month for the “privilege” of having a business chequing account can be a real hit to your profits.
I wanted to draw attention to a small business account that could help reduce those fees.
The HSBC Business Direct account is one that I came across during a previous post about bank fees. There are no monthly fees associated with this chequing account. With that, you are allowed an unlimited amount of teller-free transactions. That would include any internet, ATM, or telephone banking transactions. You can also deposit 20 cheques, and write 20 cheques per month for free. They are clearly saving themselves money by having you do most of the transactions on your own. Once you have to employ their physical locations and staff, then you will encounter more fees. With the rise of branch-less banks like ING and Ally, I believe this trend will grow significantly over the next few years. Once all of our customers are paying us digitally, there will be fewer reasons to have to go into a branch to manage our finances.
I don’t have a lot of experience with HSBC. I believe one of my clients used them for customer financing, but that’s the only time I’ve dealt with them. It might be a good idea to ask friends and colleagues about their experiences before signing up. Still, this could be a great way to save some money, or at least divert those funds to something with a better ROI.
If you have dealt with HSBC in the past, please let us know your opinion in the comments.