bank interest

[murdock]

i checked my bank account and as normal every month the bank climbs in quickly...nails me for interest and charges etc etc on the 25 before i can get my money from my customers...make an absolute killing...so now i need to change the way i do bussiness so from next month i plan on making sure my bank account is out the overdraft until after the 25 then only start paying people...which will result in me saving hundreds of rands...sometimes thousands of rands.

so what happens before you even start paying your monthly bills and wages you are down the tube for a couple thousand...i am thinking of charging a higher rate and offering a bigger discount for COD customers...COD being paid within 3 days of invoice...this is how my company operates but you still find people take advantage and hold out paying until you phone them or put their rate up...or another way to do it is add the interest i have to pay because of their late payment to their next invoice.

i have also noticed it is not cheap to do eft transfers...it would pay before to do eft transfers because drawing cash to pay bills was higher now i have noticed my eft charges are becoming another cost cutting exercise in these ever increasing difficult times...i feel for some people...my total overheads to run my bussiness including rent...motor vehicle...insurance...petrol...food...wages...is still below R15000...and i can feel the pinch...i spoke to a person the other day and they were telling me their monthly grocery bill alone is R6000 including the weekly bread and milk and weekend purchases.

so the moral of the story we need to get the banks to stop scr*wing us...or look at alternate ways to save on.

[wynn]

Also, have you ever noticed how, overnight, they always take off cheques and debit/stop-orders before they reflect what has been deposited in your account?

There must be a benifit to them for doing it this way?

[Dave A]

Could you expand on that a bit, Wynn. I'm not sure what you're getting at exactly. My experience is that deposits always show ahead of payments in the final list of a day's transactions.

[wynn]

According to my sms notification I am allways notified of all my stop/debit orders starting at 07h30 am and at about 10h00 am notified of deposits from banks other than FNB that were in fact deposited up to three days before.
FNB to FNB is almost instantaneous so are not a factor but most of my clients bank elsewhere.

Maybe it's just me? but if I look at my statements the same sequence shows.

[Dave A]

Maybe it's an FNB thing.

What I find with Standard Bank is the transactions accumulate during the day pretty much as they occur, but at some point during the night they're reshuffled so that all deposits reflect first, and then all debits reflect after.

I seem to recall Nedbank doing much the same too.

[murdock]

well at least one thing is for sure like sars ...they get their money...i just wish i could just debit my customers accounts...or charge them 28% interest on outstanding money...if i think how much money i have lost due to bad debts and interest charged on my accounts because of late payment i would be able to pay cash for my house...and drive a range rover.