Little’s new about Positive Pay … except for maybe how few companies are using it to protect their cash!

A full 70% of finance execs say they’re not availing themselves of this bank-provided control. That’s according to a recent survey conducted for CFO & Controller Alert newsletter (www.pbp.com/cfo.html).

That’s a risk you probably don’t want to be taking.

Pick what works best for you

Here are three good reasons to make sure you’re in the 30% of companies taking this step:

1. Positive Pay. The original still has its merits. You will have to send the file to your bank every day. But these days, many banks are waiving the service fee — they consider it an “insurance policy” of sorts to ward off bigger future problems.
2. Reverse Positive Pay. If you’d rather be the one to ID the discrepancies, jump on this option. By reviewing checks presented every day, you’re saving reconciliation time at month end to boot.
3. Image Positive Pay. Even the “newest” kid on the block is more than a decade old at this point. You’ll keep the quest to make your finance department more “paperless” going in the right direction by viewing potentially fraudulent payments on screen.

Better not to find out the expensive way. The companies that do have some permutation of positive pay in place say the benefits well outweigh the cost.

Catching just one fraudulent check could save thousands of dollars -– a lot more than you fork over in fees.

Tags: Accounts Payable, check fraud, controls, positive pay