QuickBooks, the tax and accounting software specialist is launching a new digital payment account aimed at small business owners.
The QuickBooks Business Account will be powered by payments-as-a-service fintech Modulr, allowing QuickBooks to offer a one-stop solution that benefits from the latter’s payments infrastructure and taps into its digital payments expertise.
QuickBooks Business Account aims to help small business owners in four key areas. Firstly, according to QuickBooks owner Intuit, small businesses waste 120 days a year on admin. Offering accounting and finance tools inside one application could help improve efficiency as using the new account will enable businesses to allocate funds to pay their taxes and run payroll more easily.
Secondly, the QuickBooks Business account lets users access the Cash Flow Planner tool within QuickBooks, which uses artificial intelligence to predict money coming in and going out of a business. The new account can be used in tandem with the Cash Flow Planner to make cash flow projections up to 24 months in advance.
Faster payments
Thirdly, the QuickBooks account could help provide reassurance to small businesses with only one in four currently confident about their financial picture. Modulr is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, offers direct access to Faster Payments and Bacs and has the ability to hold and settle funds with the Bank of England.
Fourthly, with around £50 billion currently owed to small businesses in the UK the launch of the streamlined business account that combines accounting and finance tools into one could help them recoup outstanding payments more efficiently.
Modulr will also add the option of a QuickBooks Business Account card in due course, adding a physical touch to an otherwise all digital bank account experience.
“Our direct access to the Bank of England will give small businesses the confidence, security and reliability they need to focus on what really matters – shaping and growing their business,” said Myles Stephenson, CEO at Modulr.
“We want to make payments so easy and reliable it becomes an invisible ‘behind the scenes’ operation, which means business owners up and down the country can get on with business.”