Check Scanning & Deposits

[wms7328]

I'm looking at going to direct check deposit, where the checks are scanned at the church and directly uploaded to the bank. This prevents having to take checks to the bank and enteries can be made outside of regular banking hours. I also would like to use the check scanning available in PC to speed up entry of contributions.

The question is there someway to combine the scanning so that I can accomplish both items with one scan. I know the PC program reads the magnetic print at bottom of checks with a reader and the bank requires basically a scan that creates a picture of the check. I haven't found any equipment that seems to do both, but was wondering if anyone else had tried this.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Jeff]

Talk with your bank about what they provide. We know of one bank where their program provides an export that can then be imported into the contributions module, eliminating the entry in PowerChurch.

I have talked to a third party provider about providing this functionality, but to be honest I don't see the benefit to paying extra for this service. It seems to me that you are paying more to do the work of the bank for them. The only cost savings that they can provide is that you don't have to go to the bank to make the deposit. But you still need to go to the bank to deposit the cash from the collection, so that is no advantage at all.

Is your bank asking you to do this? Are they giving you a discount if you do? The bank I mentioned above, gives their churches the hardware and provides the service for free. That makes sense to me because you are doing their data entry work for them. But most of the time I see this as an extra fee and expensive hardware that you have to buy.

This is an honest inquiry, because the only way I see an advantage to the local church is if their bank provides the hardware and service for free. We are not going to be able to integrate with individual banks. For us to provide integration it would have to be with a third party capable of servicing customers across the country. From my perspective, the extra expense that a third party would charge to handle the remote deposit doesn't make sense.

I know this is more than you were asking about, but this has come up with customers before. And I have just not been able to understand.

[wms7328]

Our bank does offer the equipment and no charge for what they term "remote deposit capture". Your right in that we are essentially doing something the bank would have to do. The advantage to us is simply we don't have to transport checks to bank and we can get the funds deposited sooner.

Our procedure is that tellers count the cash contributions on Sunday following services and they then take this directly to bank and deposit in night deposit. This keeps from having cash in the church office overnight, we have had several cases where churches have been burglarized on Sunday with folks looking for cash. The checks go to data entry staff on Monday morning and are recorded in Power Church. They have to stamp the checks and then transport to bank. It appears with the bank check scanner we could process about 100-150 checks in about 10 minutes.

This is certainly not a big issue and I agree that it doesn't make much sense to do bank's job if you have to pay extra. We are currently using electronic funds transfer through VANCO and it seems to be growing in popularity so the volumn of paper checks may start decreasing.

[Jeff]

Check with your local bank to see if the software they use provides an export. I know the one bank had a way that they were able to add the envelope number and contribution fund numbers to their program. Then they created an export file that was then imported into PC+. This eliminated the data entry step in PC+.

[wms7328]

VANCO provides the file for upload but obviously they charge for the service. Our bank does not have a way to provide the file for upload. I do have some concern over having another listing of contrbution funds and envelope numbers stored on another system that you have to keep in sync with Power Church. We are always adding new envelope numbers and have on occasion changed contribution fund numbers.

I think the best solution for us is to record the checks into PC as we always have. Then just use the bank equipment to actually transmit the checks to the bank. The advantage is about 10-15 minutes to scan checks versus having staff travel to bank to transport the checks. It also gives us way to deposit checks outside of regular banking hours.

[NeilZ]

I think the best solution for us is to record the checks into PC as we always have. Then just use the bank equipment to actually transmit the checks to the bank. The advantage is about 10-15 minutes to scan checks versus having staff travel to bank to transport the checks. It also gives us way to deposit checks outside of regular banking hours.

At our last church, we had our counting teams who regularly did all the data entry into Powerchurch for two large services. These were members of the church who volunteered their time to do the data entry.

It usually took about an hour and a half to do all checks and cash, and everything went to the bank in one deposit in the night drop box. Definitely was a better stewardship of paid staff's time and the church's money.