Bank Signatories

[James Sutlow]

At our firm we have around 10 people who are signatories on our bank account who can approve payments through online banking, they are mostly admin staff and for what it’s worth they are mostly in their 20s or 30s. These signatories are on a weekly rota but are often unavailable in meetings and we can sometimes have difficulty making urgent payments. Our CEO has proposed adding three partners to the signatory list on the basis that they will approve high value (amount tbc) payments (not that we expect this to help much!)

Payments are always loaded onto the bank by a member of the accounts team (from a fee earner’s authorisation), checked by another member of accounts team and then approved by one or two signatories depending on the value. None of the signatories are members of the accounts team.

We just wondered what other firms do? Do you have fee earners approving payments? Do you have any age/responsibility criteria on your signatories?

[Zoe Heard]

Hi James, we only have partners as signatories at my firm, cashiers load the payment onto online banking, a finance manager checks and then a partner will send on online banking or if it’s an office payment the Finance Director or Controller will send. Admin staff cannot send payments at all unless it’s the FD/FC.

[Michelle Stokes]

We have 19 Partners, 17 of them are set up as Users to approve payments on Natwest’s Bankline.
9 Partners & 8 Equity Partners.
When we make Payments, two Partners have to authorise them and one of them must be an EP.
Anyone (Support staff or Fee Earners) can create the payment request slips on the Accounts system, then a Partner has to approve the slip.
Once approved the slip comes through to Accounts, we then enter it on the Accounts system and set the payments up on Bankline.
Then we have to find two Partners (one must be an EP) to approve the payments on Bankline.
We have to print the slips out with all the Bank details and payment info on. No more than 5 payments in one Batch.
We scan the payment slips into one PDF document and email it around to the Partners asking them to offer to authorise them and generally spend far too much time chasing & begging them to get the payments authorised so that we can check the payments have gone and get confirmation from the bank (if CHAPS payments) to send to the relevant Fee Earners and then make a start on the next batch.
Its the same for Cheques (two Partner’s signatures & one must be an EP), although there arent many of them these days.
Accounts people cant authorise anything, well I can if its below £50.00 and from Office account.
So age does not come into anything at all and only Partners can authorise, one must be an EP.
I hope this helps.
I wish they would let the Accounts people authorise some payments, even if just one of the authorisations, as long as its not the same person that sets them up as it would make the process a lot quicker.
It can take over an hour to get the first Partner to offer sometimes 🙁

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