Improving business efficiency with electronic payments such as direct deposit, direct payment, and check conversion could improve the satisfaction of your employees and students, as well as save time, money, and the environment.
Whether you're converting checks that come from your students, paying your employees by direct deposit, or making and accepting your own payments through direct payment, you can keep your cash flow under control and gain access to funds more quickly. The expenses due to lost or stolen paychecks or nonsufficient funds fees on bounced checks can quickly add up, but electronic payments virtually eliminate most of those fees.
Going green with your green means helping to save our natural resources. Every year, paper checks use more than 674 million gallons of fuel and add 3.6 million tons of CO2 to the environment. If 20 percent of all households (about 22.9 million) were to switch to electronic bills, statements, and payments, every year the collective impact would:
According to PayItGreen, a coalition led by The Electronic Payments Association (NACHA), small businesses pay an average of 96 vendors by check each month. Factoring in the cost of paper checks, printer ink, envelopes, postage, and workforce, the average cost of cutting a check can be up to $2 for businesses versus 35 cents or less for direct deposit. If you employ 25 people, for example, you would save at least $2,000 a year just by paying them through direct deposit.
Although a recent survey of small business owners showed that only about a third use direct deposit (the electronic transfer of a payment from a business of any size directly into an individual's checking or savings account), the process can be quite beneficial. What can direct deposit do for you?
Direct payment (where an employee or student electronically transfers payment to your school’s account) can also bring benefits and ease workload. Direct payment goes by many names, including automatic bill payment, automatic debit, electronic bill payment, or direct debit, although they are the same application.
Check conversion (also known as accounts receivable entry (ARC), point of purchase (POP), back office conversion (BOC), electronic check, e-check, electronic check processing, and check to ACH conversion) is the process of converting your student’s paper check payments into electronic payments.
Although it does take a few minutes to set up electronic payments, doing so could save you hours in the long term.
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