 to the podcast. Welcome back to this new episode. And today I have my good friend Andrew with me. So if you haven't yet, make sure you go back to watch our previous episode where we talked about setting up your business legally and choosing the right business model for that. So Andrew, how are you today? Yeah, not bad. All good. How are you doing, Leo? All good. That intro was correct, right? That was what we talked about. Yes. Yeah, that's correct. Awesome. So if you are new to watching this podcast or you've come up, you know, you're watching this episode for the first time, Andrew is based in the UK, right? So he is a licensed accountant. And he's going to be joining us on a regular basis, talking about different areas of not only just not only taxes, but also the accounting side, which is the legal side. And I feel this is something that coaches definitely need a lot of advice and help on. So Andrew, today our topic is how to set up your business banking for sports coaches and trainers. Okay, so tell us a little bit about this topic before we get into the conversation. Yeah, so usually the first step as we spoke in the previous podcast is deciding what business structure you're going to choose and what naturally comes from that is, okay, what is the business bank account you're going to set up after. So that's kind of the natural flow of it. And then there's going to be the accounting software side, we're going to save that for another podcast. But yeah, as I said, after choosing your business structure, it's then choosing the right business bank account for your sports coaching business. Okay, awesome. So obviously out there at the moment, there's a lot of options in terms of banks, like there's new banks popping up on a monthly basis. So give the business owners watching a little bit of advice in what is the best way to find a business banking account or selecting the right bank for your business. What are a couple of tips that you can recommend? Yeah, so I would say definitely do your research. Doing the research is the best way because essentially when you choose whatever business bank account you're going to go for, you're going to stay with it pretty much for the longevity of the business. Of course, you can switch and I've had clients that do switch bank accounts, but the further along your business journey you are, the harder it is to do because you've got to do direct debits, you've got to contact your suppliers and things like that. So definitely researching it, good to know if there's any banking fees. What are the features of the banking? So for example, some bank accounts offer free accounting software. And if it's right for your sports coaching business, that could actually be quite cost effective as well. Another thing as well is customer support. What's the customer support like when you're choosing your bank account? You want to have a quite quick turnaround for the banking staff to offer any solutions to any queries that you have. Other things as well is depending on the nature of your business, you might be taking payments abroad or you're making payments to certain suppliers abroad as well. That's where having good foreign exchange fees comes in and that might be opening another separate bank account. So obviously there's a lot to think about, but good planning is key here. So I'm going to put myself in a position where I'm a coach starting up. I'm in this process of selecting a bank. What's the first step? What do I need to do? I know it sounds very very basic, right? Obviously getting contact with the bank, but talk to us a little bit about the process. Yeah, of course. Before we go on to that earlier, first of all, I want to just explain the importance of having a business bank account because I think that's something that we've got to touch on beforehand. And it is if you have a limited company, it's a must to have a company bank account anyway. Now, if you're a sole trader, sole proprietor, I've seen a lot of new businesses, they mix the personal and their business banking and that's not ideal. That's not ideal for many reasons. First of all, if you are doing the bookkeeping yourself, you're doing your books, you're going to be going through a lot more transactions. If you're assigning an accountant or a bookkeeper to do it, they're more likely to charge you higher fees because they're just more transactions to sift through even though some of them are personal. Another reason as well is if HMRC, for whatever reason, open an inquiry and they want to see your bank statements, if your business is running through your personal bank account, sometimes it can actually be hard to justify certain items of expenditure because it may seem as personal related. So that's another reason as well. And yeah, and as I said, for both if you're a limited company or you're a sole trader as well, receiving funding, whether it be lending or if you want to sell your business in the future, having a clean bank account in terms of not having personal transactions going through it is definitely a lot more favorable for the buyer or the lender. So yeah. Okay, now going on to your next part is what's the process? So certain banks have different kind of criteria and it really depends on the bank itself. Now some banks may, especially if you're a new business, certain banks may want to ask for certain evidence that you've started your business or you're about to start your business. And that could be, for example, in the sports coaching world, your level two could be, or it could just be something like buying equipment. They want to see some sort of evidence that you're actually starting your business. That's especially for new businesses. Another thing as well is definitely check out if you are working with an accountant, if they are partnered up with certain banks, that could speed up the process and your accountant could actually give you a bit more information on why you may not have passed certain steps in applying for that business bank account and how to rectify that as well. So it's always good there and also they can also give you potential discounts on bank fees and things like that. But I would say if you're a new business try and steer away from banks that are charging any sort of fees. Because as you said, there's so many banks out there, the competition is so strife there. So the banks, they're just offering free banking, which obviously is good for everyone. Good piece of advice there. For those coaches that are based more in the US or North America, when you said HMRC, that is our equivalent to the IRS. Just want to be so there's no confusion there. Now, something I've also got another question. So we've got touching on the selection of banks out there. Now, what's the difference between choosing or if there is any choosing like a popular high street bank or going with an online bank? So it could be a company such as Revolut or Stalin, one of those that aren't your normal high street bank. Are there any differences we're choosing them? Yeah, that's a good question. So I would say there are some differences. What you would experience usually is with a high street banks, they usually charge fees, monthly fees or transactional fees. It's not to say that online banks, e-money institutions as they're also called as well. They sometimes do that as well. So as I said, it is just looking into what ones charge. Pretty much all high street banks are FSCS protected, which means up to £85,000 of your money is protected if the banks do basically collapse, for example. But it's not to say actually a lot of e-money banks, so for example, Metal, which is partnered with NatWest, they're FSCS protected. Now, Stalin is and some other banks are ring fenced, so that means they are approved by the FCA, but they are ring fenced by other banks as well. So there's some sort of level protection. Of course, I'm not a banker, but there are some differences there. Now, as I said, there are some similarities. You can get good custom support from either one of them. It's good to just do some research in terms of reviews of business banking, but yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell. Okay, nice. So if there's a coach out there that's watching, they currently have a business bank account and they're realizing, right, this bank is charging me two high fees. I want to go to someone else, right? Is that an easy process to change bank or what are a few things that they should know about? Yeah, so nowadays it's so much easier to switch banks and setting up a new bank account is quite easy. A lot of banks, even high street banks, you can just set it up from your phone, take the picture, upload your ID and you can open up a new bank account within minutes, essentially. So it's not that hard to switch. The only thing I would say is that if you're more of the established business, you're having a lot of payments coming in and out of your business bank account. It's just more time consuming because then you've got to switch everything over. If some banks are part of the switch guarantee, then that process can be made a lot easier as well. Okay, good. So tell us a reason why a coach or just a business owner in general wouldn't want to set up a business banking account. Why they wouldn't? Why they wouldn't? Because I know I've spoken to a lot of coaches who are doing everything into their personal account. I give them advice. I say to them, right, you need to find an account and that can help you to set this up. And I feel like sometimes a lot of coaches are like, I can't be bothered. Yeah, it's too much effort. I've got to look for the bank. I've got to do my research. So they rather keep everything in a personal account. So why wouldn't someone do it? Yeah, so probably from a lot of the reasons that you've provided now is it could just be laziness and it could be the cost involved as well. But it's something to remember for sports coaches and other business owners when starting out the business is you want to, first of all, setting up your, as we said in the previous podcast, having a good foundation in terms of setting up your business structure, setting up your bank account, it's all, it does lay the foundation to a successful sports coaching business. And having an accountant or a bookkeeper to talk you through what other businesses have gone through, and maybe the troubles that they've had down the line, for example, and going back to the thing, you know, funding or lending, that they could come across those issues. And ultimately, if you want to build a successful sports coaching business, you've got to have these, these building blocks in place. And it will help you in the future as well. It will help you in the future. Another thing to mention as well is having different pots for, for example, your corporation tax or your income tax, have another pot for equipment, purchasing your equipment, that gives you a lot better cash flow down the line. So, but if you don't have a, you know, if you're mixing personal and business to start off, it's going to be very hard to do those extra things. And it will, it could potentially slow the growth of your business. Excellent. By pot, what do you mean by pot? For those that may not understand. So having different money pots, for example, so a lot of banks now offer the, as I said, one of the things that is good when researching bank accounts is, can you create separate money pots? And that's really, really good for planning. So tax planning, if you're buying, as I said, equipment, or if you want to pay yourself, and if there's a number of partners or directors in your business, having separate pots can be really, really good for cash flow. Another way of doing it is just setting up a number of different bank accounts as well within that, which can also be done. But yeah, having different pots, that just helps business owners allocate money and it definitely helps with cash flow and planning for the future. Awesome. Now, say you're a busy coach, right? You, I don't know, maybe you're doing it part-time. So you've got a full-time job, you're doing it kind of on the side, but you're looking to grow in scale, but you haven't got that time to sit down, to do your research on different banks. What's a piece of advice? Could you, can an accountant do that for you to save you time? Is that an option for coaches who are really busy? Yeah, so essentially there's no, there's no shortcut. However, to cut down on the time spending to research, of course, speak to an accountant who does understand the current best bank accounts, business best bank accounts, and also who work with sports coaches as well. That would help. And also if they're partnered up with certain banks, they could help expedite that process. So for example, they would be able to send a link to that business coach, sports coach, sorry, or business coach, any, any, any business, and they could then apply online. And that would help the accountant track that application process to make sure everything runs smoothly. Okay, fantastic. All right, Andrew, well, thanks again for, for jumping on here, sharing your knowledge with us. And as we're going to do on all the videos below in the description, we're going to put a number of ways to get in contact. So thanks again, and look forward to our next chat coming up. No problem. Thanks for having me.