Plan ahead – get your payments in for a Merry Christmas

With the lead up to Christmas and the New Year, business owners are likely to be busy dealing with getting the customers in and operating the business. However, small business owners need to ensure that they plan ahead when it comes to making payments and payment processing. Making payments on time is vital to ensure that everyone has a Merry Christmas and are able to enjoy the festive period.

Whether you need to pay staff in time for Christmas and New Year, or make the payments to suppliers to ensure a good relationships, you should start focusing on the payment process now. You need to make sure that you are giving enough time for any payments to be processed and then reach the recipients account. For example if you want your staff to receive their pay (wage) before Christmas (Friday 22^nd December) then the payment process has to begin on Wednesday 20^th December.

Bacs Payment Service Limited (Bac) the company behind Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit and they are urging small business and business owners to get organised over the festive period. This is to ensure that both staff and suppliers and any other payment recipients don’t miss out over the festive period and have to deal a stressful situation of delayed payments. As there are several different non-processing days towards Christmas and New Year, they need to be noted in business owner’s diaries.

Mike Hutchinson from Bacs said: “A little forward planning will avoid any last minute hitches and ensure that payments reach the recipient on time. To help with this we have produced processing calendars setting out key payment dates, which are available from our website. Our message to businesses large and small is to start preparing now to avoid any unnecessary delays to important payment.”

Non-processing days are the days when payments cannot be processed. These will include days like bank holidays which will halt the payment process. Therefore it is very important that staff and supplied are paid on time during the festive people as they will need the money over the expensive season.

Here are some of the dates you should note down to avoid any late payments:

More on late payments and news.