Starling Bank is introducing Bills Manager for small businesses in order to help business and sole trader account customers “streamline” their finances.
The feature gives small businesses the ability “to have a Direct Debit or standing order taken from money set aside in any of their ‘Savings Spaces’ rather than their main account balance.”
When customers use this feature and a payment is due (for example, for subscriptions, business utilities or commercial property leasing), the money required to make the payment will be “taken from the Space, making budget forecasting and managing business running costs much easier.”
Payments automatically sync up with accounting tools Xero and FreeAgent, which are “provided through the Starling Marketplace, as well as Starling’s own bookkeeping Toolkit.” This means that businesses can “keep track of incomings, outgoings and VAT all in one place.”
To get started with Bills Manager, customers can “go to their Savings Space, tap ‘Manage Space’, then ‘Pay bills from this Space’.” They can then “choose which Direct Debits or standing orders they would like to pay from each Space.”
Customers receive a notification “when their bills have been paid and can view the transactions by going into the Space and clicking ‘View transaction history’.”
If there are insufficient funds in their Bills Manager Space to make a scheduled payment, Starling will “send the customer a notification the day before payment is due, and on the payment due date itself.”
Customers are also “alerted when a Direct Debit is due for payment in the same way.”
Bills Manager is “available to all small business and sole trader customers with immediate effect and is free to use.” The tool was “launched to personal current and joint account customers in October 2021.”
Helen Bierton, Chief Banking Officer at Starling Bank commented:
“Our small business customers requested this feature, so we’ve delivered. Uptake of Bills Manager has been strong among our personal current account customers and we’re confident it will help hundreds of thousands of small businesses better manage their money too.”
As covered, Starling Bank is “a fully-licensed and regulated bank built to give people a fairer, smarter and more human alternative to the banks of the past.”
It offers personal, business, joint, euro and dollar current accounts “alongside a children’s card.” Starling also offers “a B2B Banking as a Service and Software as a Service proposition, based on the proprietary technology platform that it uses to power its own bank.”
The Starling Marketplace “offers customers in-app access to a selection of third party financial services.”
With head offices in London, the bank maintains offices in Southampton, Cardiff and Dublin.
