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Cheques and cheque printing, Managing Print Costs, Print Management

Cheque outsourcing. How to do it and what to look out for.

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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.

Cheques

Cheques are still needed to make payments to people and businesses.

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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  4. Why Cheques Matter to British Industry!
  5. Outsourcing. Top tips to consider before you outsource!
Cheques and cheque printing, Finance Printing, Print Management

Why Cheques Matter to British Industry!

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The Payments Council on the 12 July announced that cheques will continue for as long as the british customer need them and until such times a viable and a more effective alternative is found.

During their research, the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company found that over half of consumers with bank accounts were using cheques as a method of payment; although 60% of the consumers asked said they were writing fewer cheques compared to three years ago. The main reason for the consumer to write a cheque was to pay a bill by post this represented 36%; while paying tradesman in the home 24%; paying clubs/societies 14%; donations to charity 14%; as a gift 38% and finally as a refund 25%

The C & CCC reported that in business over 80% of companies at some point over the last year wrote and received a cheque.

32% of UK businesses sited that the reason cheques were written was to enable them to better manage their cash flow; compliance with the payee’s request to be paid by cheque represented some 25%; and finally, the ability to control which employees are allowed to make payments on behalf of the company was 23%.

But despite the good news for the continuance of the cheque scheme, figures show that there is a steady decline in cheque usage 11% for the 2010 compared to 13% in 2009. This has largely been attributed to retailers and petrol chains stopping the acceptance of cheques and moving to chip and pin from 2005 – 08.

If you compare the rise and fall of cheques; a total of 1.1 billion cheque payments were made in 2010 of which 620 million were written by consumers and 493 million by businesses. Cheque volumes were down by 72% from the peak of 4 billion transactions in 1990!

Although the general trend is downward for cheques it is still good news for the accredited cheque print suppliers in the UK and also for british industry and consumers generally.

Digital Print Management can provide cheques in any format – books, A4, cheque remittances. Our service also extends to providing a full outsource cheque printing and mailing solution and a fully automated payments bureau for regular payments.

Call us or drop us and email if you need guidance on getting your company cheques printed!

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Related posts:

  1. Cheque outsourcing. How to do it and what to look out for.
  2. Cheque printing. Why cheques are still good for business?
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