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For most commercial businesses, payments are made by customers with checks. They pay their bills when they print accounts payable checks from a disbursement account and subsequently mail them to your specified lock box service later, to clear through your bank. If your company does not receive the actual checks, you have scanned copies available to you of all check payments clearing your bank’s lock box or checking account every day.
Create a list of information from this check data. Regardless of the form, these documents hold valuable information if someone on your staff will take the time to record it. The data that can be found listed on the check face may be very useful to your collections department as well as sales personnel.
Discover your customers’ headquarters. The check a customer prints will have its legal name and address. This address generally is the corporate headquarters, something you may or may not know if you are selling only to a remote division, field office or store location. If it is not a headquarters address, it is an accounting department and will be the place for you to focus collection efforts.
Find out where the checks are cut. If this is not a corporate headquarters, the address is still important because you need to know where the customer’s bills are paid . The majority of time checks are printed at the same address from where the check is listed. Most of the time, this is the headquarters, but it also may be a division headquarters or national headquarters. This is important for your sales people to know and understand since they will want to understand all of the locations of their customers.
Lookup the telephone number for future use. If there is not a telephone or fax number on the check, enter the physical address into a search engine on the internet and most likely that related telephone number will appear in the results. You want this contact number in your database in case you need to call for past-due invoices. Be prepared and look it up now.
Note the customer’s bank. The check will also note the bank where the customer does business and where the funds were drawn. If that bank happens to be your bank, you will quickly find out that the customer checks will clear more rapidly if they are within the same bank. In fact, your loan officer may help you when you receive a check to be certain funds are available for that check since it is drawn from the same financial institution.
See who signs checks. This person might be found on the customer’s website if he is deemed of importance. It may well be irrelevant but it is worth noting.
Make a check database. Make a complete database of all your customers checks or at least the largest ones. You want to know who and how to contact the right personnel in order to get your past-due invoices paid. Scanning checks is a great place to start if you are having collection problems.
