Cheque printing and BAC’s payments are being used in vast quantities daily for payments to suppliers and customers alike.

The difficulty with combining both methods can be costly and labour intensive particularly when you are hand matching cheques and separate remittances factor in cheque distribution for various signatories and the task suddenly becomes cumbersome. A customer recently expressed his frustration at what seemed like an endless stream of cheques to sign; in reality that wasn’t the case, it just felt like it to him!

By using an end to end service for cheque printing and sign-writing the process becomes a completely automated, flexible outsourced fulfilment service for cheques and credit printing all prepared to C & CCC standards.

I am going to make the case here for why organisations should seriously consider outsourcing this process.

So here’s a list of tips to consider before cheque outsourcing!

1/ What do you hope to achieve by outsourcing your cheques? Is it cost reduction, time saving, automation of the process or a combination of all three?

2/ How many payments do you make monthly/weekly and is this inconvenient or difficult to manage?

Outsourcing enables a company to combine cheque and electronic payment transactions from one secure payments file, a bureau can take care of data separation and exceptions reporting too.

3/ Are you wanting to continue with a mix of cheque and BACS payments?

Using a payments bureau gives you the flexibility to outsource regular and one off payments and can be used for BACS, Cheques, DD Payments. You can automate payments without having to purchase or administer software.

4/ Does your system allow you to create cheque remittances? Or is it something you’ve never made the time do? By amalgamating a cheque with a remittance portion simplifies the printing and sending of cheques, no separate cheque and remittance run.

5/ Outsourcing cheques is not like asking your local printer down the road to print your stationery requirements; you need to ensure that the printer has APACS accreditation and C & CCC (Cheque & Credit Clearing Company) along with ISO27001 the information management accreditation which demonstrates a company’s process regarding the handling of your information and data.

This is critical in any outsourcing process but even more so for cheques and payments. A due diligence visit to the security printer is a must to authenticate process and procedures are in place for the handling of cheque data.

6/ Professional – Do your cheques currently convey your brand or they are simply bank standard issue?

By outsourcing your company cheques they can be personalised with your company image and design.

7/ Administration – How much time is it really taking to print and process cheques in-house?

Outsourcing cheques and payments will be done quickly, accurately and can be tailored to be processed daily, weekly or monthly.

8/ Security – what happens when cheques are distributed around the business for signing they can easily be mislaid or misappropriated and non infilled cheques pose a security risk.

Outsourcing gives you secure cheque design with additional security features UV, aqua-fugitive and holograms plus an audit trail for all cheques printed and not where’s that cheque I sent up to the 4th floor for signing gone?

9/ Do you have multiple sites?

If your organisation needs to manage stocks across a branch network or across many sites using a customer automated stocking or replenishment system will automatically manage and replenish stocks at each branch.

10/ And finally, do you need cheques for overseas banking?

Cheques can be printed in any format in any denomination – sterling £; euro € , dollars $ or even multi-currency options as A4 cut sheets, cheque books, continuous binder cheques or pressure seal mailers personalised using MICR printers, sign, fold, insert and post out.

Digital Print Management can offer independent expert advice on what kind of printed cheque a company should use and can advise you on the latest cheque formats and security cheque printing solutions.

CALL US TODAY! for more information.

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