Holiday tips

Let the Bacs Holiday PA take you smoothly through the holiday season.

Welcome to the Holiday PA page. My role is to provide invaluable help and advice and guide you through the potential pitfalls of the holiday high season.

From the most basic problem of lacking someone to sign cheques to more complex issues, the busiest period of annual leave can leave many small to medium sized businesses facing a difficult situation.

But it’s a time of year that really highlights the benefits of Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit. If you’re looking to improve cash flow management, reduce administration costs, make direct cost savings, avoid time-consuming processes and enjoy the benefit of funds being cleared as soon as they arrive in your bank account, I would really recommend it! 

The top 10 holiday tips

1. Check if your company's utility bills are due for payment while you're away and avoid late payment surcharges by setting up Direct Debit payments now. 
2. Time is precious in the pre-holiday period, reduce the time spent going to the bank by seeing if you can bank online. 
3. Ensure that cash keeps flowing while you are away by removing your reliance on other people to pay in cheques: contact key customers now and ask them to pay via Bacs Direct Credit - the funds will be cleared straight into your account. 
4. Apply best practice at home: have you checked if household or credit card bills will be due while you're away? They can be set up on Direct Debit too. 
5. Check with key staff to see if they will have requirements for petty cash while you're away and make arrangements to meet these. 
6. Do key senior colleagues have the relevant bank account details and contacts to enable them to pick up urgent queries? 
7. Late payment legislation gives businesses a statutory right to claim interest for the late payment of commercial debt. Avoid unnecessary charges and damaged supplier relationships: set up automated payments now, you can send payments to Bacs up to 30 days before the payment date and they’ll warehouse them, releasing them on the due date. 
8. To ensure colleagues can contact you in a crisis check that your mobile phone service covers your destination, and if calls are likely to be lengthy invest in an international phone card. 
9. Make arrangements for trusted colleagues to open and handle your mail: unopened bills can still incur interest! 
10. If your holiday falls around pay day, ensure that salaries and wages will be paid automatically using Bacs Direct Credit.

I hope these tips are useful. Why not email them on to a friend or colleague?