Would you send your employees a letter rather than an email? Deliver a meeting calendar to every cubicle? Or slide handwritten to-do lists under office doors?

With today’s technology, it’s likely that you don’t do any of these things because the inefficiencies are obvious – time wasted, loss of flexibility, confusion, miscommunication, and excess use of company resources. 

What many don’t realize is that these same inefficiencies (and more) are present when businesses continue to use checks to pay their suppliers.

Checks have PHYSICAL costs.

• In the United States, over 50% of business payments are still made using checks. Simply issuing and depositing check payments costs U.S. businesses between $26 and $54 billion annually.¹

Checks incur LABOR costs.

• Your accounts payable (AP) staff are valuable resources. When they’re on the clock, you want them working to their full potential, not wasting time stuffing, stamping, mailing, collecting, or reconciling checks. And for those organizations still having checks signed, how much in executive salary is that costing?

Checks cost your BUSINESS.

• Not only are you paying for the supplies to write the checks and the people to process them, your business incurs costs from for printing, treasury processing fees, tracking down lost checks, and escheatment. Reducing the amount of checks your business processes and making payments using virtual credit cards means you can save time and money by digitizing and automating manual tasks associated with checks. Plus, payment solutions like CommercePayments™ Payment Hub can help your business by maximizing your revenue generating payment potential along with having all of your other payments made from a single file handled by reputable payment specialists.

By joining other industry leading companies in paying your suppliers using a virtual credit card/AP card instead of checks, your business can reduce these costs while earning additional revenue through transactions with your suppliers. Not to mention the security offered by a payment management system which reduces the risk of fraudsters lifting account information from a check or forging a signature.

In a world of rapid-innovation where your business needs to stay flexible to stay profitable, replacing check payments with revenue-earning payment types like the CommercePayments™ AP Card can empower your company to lead the pack and turn your accounts payable department from a cost-center into a profit-generating entity.

CommercePayments™ solutions are provided by Commerce Bank.

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Also See:

• Does Your Company Have a Payment Strategy?
• How to automate your cash flow (and get paid faster).

Disclosures:

1  Monga, Vipal. “U.S. Companies Cling to Writing Paper Checks.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 10 Mar. 2014, www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-companies-cling-to-writing-paper-checks-1394494772?tesla=y.