[Finance] Bank advice needed guys

[surlyseagull]

I deposited a cheque made out to my business in the cash machine at local Nat West and got a photo receipt .I noticed a few days later that said cheque had not appeared in business account so I rang bank and enquired and they said they would look into it .
Anyway after a bit of investigating by bank it appears that cheque had been paid into my private account even though it was made out to the business (totally different name acc sort code etc ) .
When I asked how this could happen they said if it is a small amount it can be done even though I wouldn't have thought it a small amount and was a different acc.
Now obviously it is all sorted now but wondered as a matter of interest if any one has come across this themselves or has any idea how this could have happened .

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Don’t worry, I’m sure the HMRC won’t find out.

 

[Weststander]

Strange mistake by the bank, when they have to abide by the strictest of anti Money Laundering legislation.

Inadvertently, you've gained tax free income.

 

[Lower West Stander]

It depends what it actually said on the cheque.

If you have a business name which is clearly different from your own name and the account number was specified, then it cannot be done.

That is human error, pure and simple, and the banks bullshitting you.

 

[B-right-on]

I have a business account and private account with the same bank and they are 'linked' by my name. So I can see on my online log in all my accounts. I bet some twerp just clicked the wrong account when they were loading the cheque and so it was credited to the wrong account. Human error and complete BS as per other post imo.

 

[Napier]

Did you put your business account details on the paying in slip and did you put your business account debit card in the ATM? If you did both, I cannot see how they managed to cock it up!

 

[surlyseagull]

It depends what it actually said on the cheque.

If you have a business name which is clearly different from your own name and the account number was specified, then it cannot be done.

That is human error, pure and simple, and the banks bullshitting you.

Well exactly, this is what I thought !! The fact that my acc numbers are different and even my accounts as one is held elsewhere at another branch .
I paid it in using my business card so maybe by mistake I used my personal bank card but even then the cheque was made out to my business not my personal acc and would think the machine would not have accepted it anyway.
Blo*dy confusing some what

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

If you were using an ATM you must have inserted a card to operate.
The cheque then presented should/must only be credited to the account on the card used.
If this did not happen, what's to stop the credit going to anyone else's account?
If you definitely used your business card to operate the ATM and the money was erroneously credited to your personal account this seems like a massive system failure to me.

Glad I don't bank with Nat West.

 

[surlyseagull]

If you were using an ATM you must have inserted a card to operate.
The cheque then presented should/must only be credited to the account on the card used.
If this did not happen, what's to stop the credit going to anyone else's account?
If you definitely used your business card to operate the ATM and the money was erroneously credited to your personal account this seems like a massive system failure to me.

Glad I don't bank with Nat West.

Totally agree .

 

[beorhthelm]

seems simply you used your personal banking card and the bank has slack checks on the actual cheques paid in through that means.

 

[Munkfish]

Sounds like Human Error. I doubt this is an end to end system process.

 

[Invicta]

Nobody would manually check the payee name. Would pass funds Straight into the account of the debit card used

 

[Arthritic Toe]

Nobody would manually check the payee name. Would pass funds Straight into the account of the debit card used

I'm sure they do manually check the payee name and that its dated etc - that's why cheques are such a ball-ache for the banks. However, for small amounts they won't bother being so rigorous about it and have probably just seen that the individual is associated with the company and let it go through rather than make a fuss about a trivial amount.

 

[The Clamp]

I've never had a good experience with depositing cheques into the ATM. Always takes longer to clear in my experience.

 

[Invicta]

I'm sure they do manually check the payee name and that its dated etc - that's why cheques are such a ball-ache for the banks. However, for small amounts they won't bother being so rigorous about it and have probably just seen that the individual is associated with the company and let it go through rather than make a fuss about a trivial amount.

The minimum amount they 'checked was £10k back in thev1990's. Not sure now.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

A few years ago I was privileged to be given a tour of the cheque clearing house at Gatwick, circa mid-90's.
I'm sure things have improved since then, but back then, all cheques ran through a scanner [they had 5 of these scanners] and the amount in words was OCR'd [Optical Character Recognition] against the amount in numbers. These machine read 100's of cheques per minute and if a discrepancy was detected or the handwriting was unreadable by the OCR software the cheque was routed to a manual worker for manual processing. The OCR also read the date to make sure the cheque was not more than 6 months old and not in the future - remember the guy saying that loads got rejected 1st week of Jan as people were still writing the previous year on their cheques.

I'm pretty sure the number of cheques now would be a lot less than back then, but I have no idea of current processing methods. I know the ATM reads cheques so it tells you how much your're banking rather than asking you to key the amount in.

Now, I have no idea if the same approach is/was used to check payee name against the account holder name - but the technology available does make this possible