Current, Deposit & Building Society Accounts: Codes 1200, 1210 & 1220

Most small businesses run day-to-day through a single current account, but as cash builds up it's common to hold some of it somewhere it can earn a bit of interest, still within Sage's normal bank codes.

The three codes, and what each one holds

Code 1200 — Bank Current Account is the main account the business trades through day to day — customer receipts, supplier payments, staff and HMRC payments all pass through here.

Code 1210 — Bank Deposit Account records money moved into an interest-bearing deposit account, usually cash that isn't needed immediately.

Code 1220 — Building Society Account covers the same idea held with a building society rather than a bank. All three are Current Assets codes and normally carry a debit balance.

A worked example

Say a business has built up £30,000 more in its current account than it needs for day-to-day trading, and moves £20,000 into a building society deposit account earning interest.

Bank Current Account (code 1200): credited £20,000 as the cash leaves the current account.

Building Society Account (code 1220): debited £20,000 as the cash lands there instead.

The total cash position across both codes is unchanged — it's simply been redistributed between two Current Assets accounts.

Why this matters day to day

Keeping deposit and building society balances in their own codes rather than lumping them into the main current account makes bank reconciliation far easier — each code should tie exactly to one real-world account statement. It also means the current cash actually available for trading is visible at a glance, rather than mixed in with money that's deliberately been set aside.