Bank rang me about an incoming transfer and I completely froze — what are you meant to say

Sorry if this belongs somewhere else, mods please move it.

Context because I think it matters. I've had three payouts now, all small, all into my normal current account. The third one was 1,340 from a company in Malta and this morning the bank phoned me. Perfectly polite woman, said it was a routine check on an incoming international payment, and asked what the payment was for.

I said "it's, um, work" and then said "marketing" and then said something about a website. I could hear how it sounded. She said fine and that was the end of it and the money is there.

But I have another one coming in October and I'd like to not do that again. What do people actually say? I'm not doing anything illegal, I just apparently cannot describe my own job under mild pressure.

you say online advertising services, invoiced monthly. it's true and it's boring and boring is the whole objective

Online advertising services. Say the same thing every time my friend, that is the trick.

grindstone's wording is right; I want to explain why it works, because understanding it will stop you freezing next time.

The person calling you is not investigating you. She is completing a form. The form has a field for the purpose of the payment and she needs a phrase that fits a category. "Online advertising services" fits a category. "Um, work" does not fit a category, so she has to keep asking, and the longer she asks the more attention the file gets.

What helps, in order:

1. A consistent description you use every time. Not a different one each call.
2. An invoice you can send if asked. If you are not issuing invoices to these companies, start; it takes ten minutes per payout and it converts an unexplained credit into a documented one.
3. Knowing roughly what your monthly figure is before they ask. Hesitating over your own numbers reads badly and there is no reason for it.

The separate point, which nobody here wants and which I will make anyway: if this is going to be recurring income, register it properly. The version of this conversation you have in year three is very different depending on whether you did.

One practical thing beyond the script: the reason the call happened at all is that a small international credit from an unfamiliar entity into a personal salary account is unusual for that account. It isn't the amount, it's the mismatch.

A lot of people here separate the two — salary in one place, business income somewhere it isn't remarkable — and the calls stop, because nothing about the payment is out of pattern any more.

If you want to work through what that actually looks like in practice, the Payments & Processing board is where people go through payout rails properly, and Crypto Cards & Prepaid covers the spending side once the money isn't in a normal bank. Both are better on this than anything I could summarise in a reply.

Had this in 2019 and made it much worse than you did - I got defensive, asked why they needed to know, and ended up with the account restricted for eleven days while someone reviewed it.

The lesson I took was that sounding annoyed is the expensive reaction, not sounding vague. You did the mildly awkward version, which is the normal version. Half their calls sound like yours.

Are you invoicing them at all, or is the money just turning up?

Just turning up. I didn't know I was allowed to invoice a network - I assumed the dashboard was the paperwork.

Writing one for October's payout this weekend. Thank you all, individually, and quietaccountant especially for explaining the form thing. That's the bit that would have stopped me panicking.