Quick question …does anyones civillian committee reimburse staff expenditure electronically?
Not mine. Apparently online banking is beyond them, despite taking subs and dishing out money to wing when they want it.
I insist on cash, as I can’t get to the bank to pay in a cheque, since my bank decided to not open at the weekend.
Depends on what you have bought for the Sqn, if its a few quid then it’s cash as long as a Receipt is given in, I’d say anything over £50 onwards may be put into your bank account. It also depends how much money you have locked up on Sqn.
Ours does online banking. Works so much quicker than the cheques.
Ours only deals with Staff Reimbursement electronically.
You scan your receipt, email to me or my Adjutant, I forward it to the Treasurer he does his bit of the online banking and emails the Chairman who then ticks the approval box and you get paid.
I made a Purchase the other day and had the money back in my Account in 13 minutes.
1 Like
We still do the double signed cheque for everything
1 Like
Same…
Cheques can usually be paid in digitally now. You scan the cheque on your banking app so you don’t need to go to the bank.
Online banking can be a challenge as you need 2 people to authorise payments, usually chair and treasurer. Most regular bank accounts don’t have this facility but specialist accounts and banks might. CAF bank I know for a fact has the facility to create payments and hold them in draft until 2 of the authorised personnel can log in and approve them.
Barclays seem able to manage it
I think you just need to ask for the functionality.
Lloyds allow double ‘signatures’ online as well, I believe. Our committee are trying to move to online.
1 Like
Ours seem very happy with the Barclays offer.
Online banking for us also - Barclays.
We have a couple card holders to, civ com tops up with petty cash so nobody is out of pocket.
For the love of God, don’t go with Lloyd’s…
We fell for their “business account opened in 10 days” promise. It still wasn’t open after 6 months.
Everytime we’ve needed to change something, there has been a problem - but for some reason, Lloyd’s never feel the need to actually let someone on the account know… 
1 Like
Barclays for us, everything done electronically. PITA when you have to change signatories though!
We currently do online transfer for everything, even our wing have done away with cheques and use online transfer as their preferred choice.
We have all subs by standing order and are looking to move to electronic for most of the payments into the Squadron from parents this year, either by card payment or online transfer.
We already have the card terminal with a minimal transaction fee which we will take the hit on but it’s more for a back up for those who don’t do online transfers.
It depends on the individual Squadron, apart from the cash canteen, a lot of Squadrons try to avoid cash, including Cadet Subscriptons.
We use Xero and it works well. Everything purchased is approved at the Committee meeting and the staff member goes and buys. They photo receipt straight in to Xero and then the treasurer pays via transfer. Staff member gets e-mail to say its been paid. Staff member can also look on the app and see what has been approved for payment and then when it gets paid.
While you can pay in a cheque digitally, how well it works depends on the bank. It takes me about an hour to do it with HSBC because the app itself takes the pictures automatically and is very touchy about where you hold the phone in relation to the cheque. Loads of moving up/down/left/right, and then it demands a photo of the back, which is blank! It would be much easier if there was a manual option!
Cheques should have died by now. We need to let them.
Do you have a severe case of the shakes? I use the BoS app, which works just as you described, and I manage to pay in a cheque in just a handful of minutes.
I agree that we should be rid of cheques by now. I really only use a cheque book for ATC/RAF stuff nowadays!
I’m treasurer (have been for 14 years) of a group which arranges a large fete and lots people still pay by cheque for “stalls”, despite us offering BACS payments for 6 years. A lot of businesses still use cheques. Also we have to pay the council for things and believe me a cheque is the least hassle. We did look into online payments but it wasn’t as simple as online payments should be.
So unless and until all providers make payments easier cheques will be around. If we could get rid of this antiquated “double signature”, life would be much easier.