What is Business Contract Hire and How Does it Work?

If you’re new to the world of business leasing, our complete guide can bring you up to speed. From explaining the top reasons our customers choose business leasing to the criteria you need to meet to qualify for a business lease – we cover it all.

What is Business Contract Hire?

You may have heard of Personal Contract Hire (PCH) before, or even had your own personal lease at some point. Well, Business Contract Hire really isn’t THAT different, it’s just a leasing option for businesses, rather than individuals. With a ZenAuto business lease, a Director of a business can lease a car for themselves and/or their employees, at a fixed monthly cost (paid by the business) and on a 2–4-year term.

Unlike Business Contract Purchase (BCP), with business leasing there’s no need to save up to pay a lump sum at the end – you can either swap it for some new wheels or just walk away completely. Plus, it’s much less hassle as you don’t have to worry about the resale value.

Benefits of leasing a car through your business

Easy, tax efficient car financing

If your business is VAT registered, you can claim up to 100% of the VAT back on the monthly rental payments (100% for solely business use and 50% when the car is used for a mix of private and business trips).

We’ll sort all the admin  

From sending you reminders for when your service is due to getting your P11D values straight to your inbox for your tax self-assessment, we take all the stress away so you can just focus on your workday!

Spread the cost of car maintenance

If you opt for a business car lease with maintenance you’ll get peace of mind that you and/or your team are covered for MOTs, servicing, and tyre TLC. Plus, it only takes a couple of mins to book your MOTs / services via our online portal, so you can easily get this boxed off in between your meetings.

How to qualify for a ZenAuto business lease

There’s a set of criteria that you need to meet to qualify for a ZenAuto business lease:

• Be a Director of a limited company
• The limited company that you are a Director of must have been trading for 3 or more years and is registered in England, Wales or Scotland; and
• As a Director you may also be required to be a Guarantor to guarantee the Business Contract Hire and therefore you must be a permanent resident in Mainland GB

How does business car leasing work?

Now you know the basic gist of things, let’s take a further look at the ZenAuto lease process.

Firstly, it’s all online so you can do it anytime, anywhere! Secondly, we have a friendly bunch of car experts on hand to talk things through. If you have a question before you place your order just ring our New Car Consultants on  0113 468 5377 (option 1) or email [email protected]. Already ordered and awaiting delivering? Our Support Squad are here to help, you can reach them on 0113 468 5377 (option 2) or email [email protected].

The Zen journey

1.       Pick your car and place your order

Whether you want a BMW i4 business lease, a Tesla Model Y business lease or something completely different, you’re sure to find a car that meets your business needs. Need some help? Our New Car Consultants can recommend the right cars for you and save you some time.

Once you’ve settled on which car to get, the next step is to build your lease. You have the flexibility to set your length of lease, annual mileage, initial payment, monthly payments, and any optional extras. FYI you should be certain that the business can afford the payments – now and for as long as you’re leasing with us.

2.       Submit a credit application

Once we’ve received your application, we’ll get cracking with the finance checks. We need to run finance checks on the applicant company (and in some cases we may need to run checks on the Director acting as the Guarantor, but we’ll be in touch if this applies to you) – this includes credit affordability and financial crime checks.

3.       Sign the agreement and do the ID checks

Once the finance check has been successfully passed, the Director needs to review and digitally sign the Business Contract Hire Agreement within 10 days of the docs being sent over.

We’ll also need the Director to upload some ID, so we can verify that we’re setting the lease up for the right person.

4.       Pay your processing fee and make it official

One more step to go! Now we just need the applicant company to pay the processing fee of £82.50 exc VAT (it covers all the admin to get the order pushed through).

5.       Get ready for new car day

And that’s it, the car’s officially ordered! We’ll keep you updated with the progress of the order and let you know when the car is ready to be delivered.

Key things to know ahead of delivery

• Whilst you wait for the car to arrive, you need to ensure that car insurance is set up in the name of the business. You must have a fully comprehensive policy in place from the day the car arrives, to the day we pick it up at the end of the lease. For the full lowdown on insurance for a business lease car, just check out our handy guide.
• We’ll need to take the initial payment before we can deliver the car. We’ll take this by direct debit from the same account as the monthly payments – the business will have 10 working days’ notice before we take it. Just let us know if you want to pay another way.

6.       Delivery day

We’ll deliver the car to the driver’s home address for free within Mainland GB.* On the day, the Director signing the Business Contract Hire Agreement will need to be there and photo ID, e.g., driving licence or passport, will be required to confirm that it’s really them accepting the shiny new car.

If the Director is not going to be the driver and a different driver has been specified on the application, they would need to be present instead and provide the same proof of ID.

Watch our quick video to learn about all the checks you should do on delivery day…  

7.       End of lease

You’re probably not thinking about the end of the lease just yet, but we did promise that this would be a complete guide (and we like to keep our promises!). You can read all about the end of lease options on our dedicated page. Then, when collection day comes along, we have a step-by-step guide to get you ready.  

If you like the sound of stress-free business leasing, you can get browsing our top deals and kick start your ZenAuto journey today!

Still got a few questions? Our frequently asked questions page should have all the answers for you. Or you can speak to our New Car Consultants directly on 0113 468 5377 (option 1) or via email on [email protected].

* Mainland GB includes England, Wales and Scotland but excludes Northern Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, the Scottish Islands, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, the Isle of Wight, and the Isles of Scilly.