Are you scanning checks?

Does your office use a device similar to the one pictured above?

If you do, are you getting as much value from it as you could?

Remote deposit capture

For several years, many banks have promoted check scanners to facilitate remote deposit capture (RDC).  Remote deposit capture enables your office to deposit checks by electronically transmitting digital images of the checks. This saves your staff the time and effort of preparing a bank deposit for checks and physically taking that deposit to your local bank branch.

Many banks sell or, in some cases, make available at no cost, check scanners to customers. This is so you can scan checks to send the bank an RDC, sometimes called a Check 21 deposit. Check 21 is short for the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, which allows for digital images of checks in place of the actual paper check.

Remittance processing

Check 21 deposits are great time-savers for your bank, while improving productivity for your office as well. However, what they don’t address is the real time-consuming part of processing check payments – entering the payments into your billing software.

This is where a remittance processing system comes into play. Remittance processing systems allow you to scan the bill stubs and checks, back-to-back. The scanner is programmed to read the customer’s account number and amount due from the bill stub. It then uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to scan the amount paid from the check and pairs the information from both documents into a single transaction.

Remittance processing systems capture images of both the bill stubs and checks for future research and for the Check 21 deposit. Finally, it produces a file of payment data that can be imported into your billing software, saving the tedious task of entering each check payment.

How do you make the switch?

If you are currently using a check scanner only for preparing Check 21 deposits, how do you transition to using it as a remittance processing system? Start by asking your bank if the scanner they provided has the capability of also scanning bill stubs (sadly, many don’t). If it does, contact your billing software vendor to see if they can use the output file from the check scanner to import into the billing system.

If your check scanner only scans checks or your billing software vendor can’t accept an output file from the scanner, your only option is to purchase a remittance processing system from a vendor who sells those systems.

Are you processing payments efficiently?

Is your office processing payments as efficiently as possible? If not, or if you aren’t sure, please give me a call at 919-673-4050 or email me at gary@utilityinformationpipeline.com to learn how a business review can help you find out.

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