bacs has now been around for nearly 45 years and offers a smooth and relatively painless way to transfer money from one account to another. Bacs software can be integrated with your existing accounting systems, taking a lot of the time and worry out of moving money around. But if you’re thinking of making the update from more traditional payment systems to bacs payments, you’ll no doubt have a few questions to ask. Is it worth the trouble that always comes with change? In an age of cyber-theft, is it really secure? In general, do the advantages outweigh the problems and potential pitfalls?

1) Speed. The first advantage of bacs is the speed with which transfers are made. Although three working days is generally the stated time frame – still faster than a cheque – most payments today are made with the Faster Payment System (FPS) which is all but instant. This means almost all of your payments will appear in the target account on the same day, if not sooner.

2) Security. Although many people have concerns about the safety of transferring funds electronically, bacs has many levels of security and is an extremely safe way to move money. In the highly unlikely event that you do run into problems, there are measures in place to recover your money, anyway. In times past employers and businesses would have dealt more in cash, meaning that they would have to keep large sums of money on the premises – itself a security risk. Cheques, too, can get mislaid – meaning you’re never sure if or when they’re going to be cashed.

3) Cost. Transfers are free within the UK, so there’s no cost to your business aside from that of installing the new systems.

There are arguably one or two downsides to using bacs, but these are negligible. Bacs payments are free within the UK but there are charges for transferring money to other countries. Bacs software is extremely convenient and powerful, but you may not receive notifications of money reaching your account – hardly a problem in most cases, and not something you’d enjoy with a cheque either. Also, if there is a mistake with an account number, it can be hard to reclaim your funds – assuming it’s a valid, if mistaken account number. In almost every case, though, the advantages far outweigh any downsides and so moving to bacs will rarely be a bad move for a business.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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