Excess balance nudges were designed to help businesses transfer any unwanted excess from the business current account, but may not know exactly how much can be transferred or when (most likely because the month-to-month business finances changes frequently.
The basic idea is for Marygold to notify you when your business current account receives large inflows (i.e receipts), and suggest you save any surplus (or part there of, %) in your business current account prior to receipt of the new payment. It can be a useful 'blunt instrument' to help set aside funds with simple rules and manage current account balances (depending on your business type):
It works like this:
- Link your business current account to the Marygold app.
- Specify a trigger amount which, if exceeded by an inbound payment into your Primary Account (your external business current account), will generate a notification. For example, you may wish to sweep 30% of the business current account balance excess (i.e. 30% of the account balance prior to receiving most recent large payment) if the inbound receipt was greater than £20,000.
- Set the percentage of the excess you'd like to save (e.g. save 75% of the excess).
These nudges are very good for businesses that want to set aside funds for contingency and/or future liabilities using a very simple rule. Often business finances can be highly complex, and so being able to allocated business funds using easily understandable rules can be advantageous.
When each notification is generated, you have the ability to:
- Click 'pay now' and move the money as suggested. Your bank app will open, with the appropriate payment details complete, for you to simply review and authorise.
- Click 'edit'. This will open the Marygold app and allow you to change the transfer instructions for this time only (you can change the amount and/or destination accounts), then take you on to your bank app for a second review and authorisation.
- Click 'ignore'. Which simply means you want to skip the saving this time, but receive future notifications.
It means you remain in complete control. You do not have to think too hard in advance about whether, on any given future date, you can transfer funds or not. It can also help to keep your balances held in (typically) low-interest bearing business current accounts to a minimum.