Review contents
A great business bank account for small to medium sized businesses with everything you’d expect from a bank, and more, all in an awesome phone app. They have a free version and their customer service is great.
Ready for business? Tide certainly are. They’re ready to help you and your business get up and running with a business bank account – whether you’re a freelancer, a small business or a growing business with thousands of customers.
It’s all very modern, there’s no high street branch, but in the 21st century who cares? It’s all managed through an app on your phone or through a website on a computer.
There’s tonnes of great features, some you’d expect from a bank, and some you’d only expect from a modern company such as integrating with your accounting software!
We actually use Tide here at Nuts About Money, it’s great – and if you think Tide is for you, get £50 cash for free straight into your account when you open your account. Get started here¹.
What a revelation, you can now manage your business finances from your phone! Get up-to-date transactions in the app, your up-to-the minute balance, invoices, make payments and even chat to the support team. It’s super easy to use, and quite a bit better than your high street bank app which are typically hard to use and slow.
It’s not just a simple app for sending and receiving money. There’s lots of handy features, one pretty useful one is tagging your transactions into categories automatically, so you can better manage where your money is coming and going over time, and customise these categories to suit your business, and help manage your tax better too.
You can create and send invoices too. It’s easy and super quick, and with your company branding and payment terms – which then matches with your payments so you can keep track of which invoices have been paid, and which haven’t, all in one place.
And another very handy feature, you can upload receipts directly into the app by just taking a photo on your phone and matching it with a transaction – your accountant will love this one.
If doing everything within an app is making you a bit uncomfortable, fear not! They have an easy to use website that allows you to access your account on a computer too.
Use accounting software for your business? Well you’re in luck, you can integrate your banking seamlessly – all your transactions will simply appear in whichever accounting system you are using – Quickbooks, Xero and Sage just to name a few, and it only takes a few minutes to set up. Who needs a bookkeeper these days?
If Tide is for you, get £50 for free straight into your new account.
Tide has 3 different types of accounts, each for your stage of business. The free account for those just getting started, the Plus account for those for growing businesses and the Cashback account for those spending big. Here’s a breakdown of each one:
If you’re just getting started, this is the account for you. It’s got everything you need, there’s just no bells and whistles – well, it is free after all. There’s also some small charges when you use basic features, such as 20p to transfer money in and out (not to use the card) – which is actually a lot less than traditional banks who charge up to 65p per transfer, even when you pay a monthly fee.
The Plus account is the more ‘standard’ option, it’s what most businesses go for, and comes in at £9.99 per month (plus VAT). You’ll get a free expenses card if you need one, and 20 free money transfers each month.
However, the main benefit is the extra customer support you get, with priority in-app support, and able to use phone support.
Big spender? With this account you can get 0.5% back in cash on all your purchases with your card. Result. It comes at a cost of £49.99 (plus VAT), so designed for slightly bigger businesses.
It also comes with a dedicated account manager to handle all of your support questions and help to fully utilise the account and features.
The support is quite simply, great. It’s mostly all handled through the messaging feature on the app, where you can chat to their support team to help you with any queries you have.
The paid plans get priority support when using the live chat support, but the main benefit is the ability to speak on the phone 24/7.
On the more expensive plan, (£49.99), you even get a dedicated account manager – that’s someone who acts like old school bank managers did, there for whatever you need, even just for a chat. You can speak to them all through the app too and reply when it’s convenient for you.
A pretty cool feature and idea, Tide will set up a limited company for you all for free! A limited company makes your business official in the eyes of the law and more legitimate to customers and partners.
Once set up as a limited company, you’ll now pay corporation tax, which is 19% on profits, rather than income tax which is between 20% and 45% of your income, which you would pay as an individual sole trader, depending on how much you earn.
This saves a fair bit of admin and it’s great to have a helping hand and to make sure everything is right. For comparison it can normally cost £100s to have someone else do this for you, so it’s a fairly good saving. Although you can do it yourself for a small registration fee of £12 too.
Expense cards: if you’re on the free plan, you’ll have to pay £5 per month for a card. On the paid for plans, you’ll get free expense cards (only 1 on the standard paid plan).
Replacement cards: keep losing your card? Get a replacement for free.
ATM withdrawals: withdrawals aren’t free, they cost a cool £1 each time.
Read access: if you want to share the account with someone but only want them to view it, you can do that. It’s a pretty good feature.
Multiple business accounts: you can have up to 5 accounts for different businesses, for free, across any plan.
Quick registration: it only takes a few minutes to get your account set up, all you need is an ID to verify who you are and you’re all set.
CSV exports: bit of a dab hand at spreadsheets? You can export all your transactions as a CSV file and do with it whatever you like.
Pay in cash: you can pay in cash at any Post Office (£2.50 fee), or PayPoint location (3% fee).
Let’s run through the pros and cons of Tide.
Tide has over 11,000 reviews from customers on the review site Trustpilot, which gives them a score of 4.1 out of 5 and a rating ‘Great’.
However, we’d expect more customer-focused businesses like Tide to have a score higher than this. Why? Banking tends to get lower scores overall as the strict regulation that governs how they manage customer accounts – to protect customers from fraud and prevent money laundering.
Which means that sometimes legitimate businesses can sometimes be reviewed, and when this happens the customer doesn’t always get the best experience and give them a poor rating.
This is common for most banks – and in comparison, Santander, a large bank, has a score of just 1.4 out of 5, and Barclays has a score of 1.5 out of 5.
We think it’s that good, that we actually use Tide for our own banking. The app is great to use, has everything you’d want from a bank, plus more such as invoicing, and it integrates with accounting software.
It’s great value for money, and you can even start on the free plan if you’re just starting out. It’s a solid 5 stars from us.
Yep!
We’ve got an awesome deal for you too – cold, hard cash! Get £50 straight into your Tide account when you open your account – just get started here¹ or use the referral code X7VE7O. It’s as simple as that.
Full disclosure, we’ll also get a small fee too, which helps us keep the lights on here at Nuts About Money.
If you’d rather not use the deal, just head to their website instead – you can always come back for the deal later!
If Tide is for you, get £50 for free straight into your new account.
If Tide is for you, get £50 for free straight into your new account.
If Tide is for you, get £50 for free straight into your new account.
This article was written by the team at Nuts About Money, and fact-checked by 2 independent reviewers. You’re in safe hands.
If Tide is for you, get £50 for free straight into your new account.
