Business Banking - Paying in cheques

[dabeeeenster]

Does anyone know of a business account that provides details of cheques being paid in, specifically the cheque number or the person paying the cheque, on the bank statement?

My business is with Abbey at the moment; when paying in 2 cheques for the same amount from different clients (Which occurs quite often) it is impossible for the book keepers to track which invoices have been paid, and from whom, which is a crazy state of affairs!

[dadofbud]

when you receive a cheque, photocopy it and staple it to the appropriate copy invoice and give it to your book keeper.
Also write the date you paid it into the bank

Edited by dadofbud on Sunday 11th March 18:28

[dabeeeenster]

Yeah, we do that already, but if we pay in 2 cheques for the same amount on the same day or a day apart, it's impossible to tell...

[tinman0]

dabeeeenster said:

Yeah, we do that already, but if we pay in 2 cheques for the same amount on the same day or a day apart, it's impossible to tell...

erm, write them in the part of the paying-in slip you keep?

[dabeeeenster]

Maybe I'm not making myself clear. I want a bank that shows me, on my statement, the cheque number or paying in slip number when I pay cheques in. So I can tell which cheques have cleared...

[superlightr]

when you pay in the cheque do you use a paying in book?

if so each page has a reference number on it which shows on your statements with the amount. In the interum of your search for the Holy grail, If you have 2 cheques the same, pay them in under different pages.

I dont know of any bank that lists the cheque number on your statements when you pay it in. If it doesnt clear they do show on the statements and will get shown as a contra entry.

[dabeeeenster]

That's the problem - the only thing I see on my statements is "Bank Counter Credit" and the amount...I want a bank that shows some identifying number.

[Mrs Trackside]

dabeeeenster said:

That's the problem - the only thing I see on my statements is "Bank Counter Credit" and the amount...I want a bank that shows some identifying number.

I don't understand what your problem is here. I'm a book keeper and we use Abbey too. This is how I do it :

1) Raise invoices and send them to clients
2) Receive payments for invoices (sometimes by cheque). (Regular clients pay us by BACS or standing order).
3. In the case of cheques write out paying in slip, listing all the clients and the amount on the back of the slip. this can be photocopied and attached to your copy, or I attach a copy of remittance (if I have one) to my copy of the paying in slip . If no remittance is given, I make a note of the customer, how much they have paid and the invoice(s) they are paying. If there is more than one cheque, then I can trace back who the cheques were from and how much they were for from the remittances/notes I have made/photocopy of the back of the paying in slip sent with the cheques to the bank.
4. Send cheques off to bank in a prepaid envelope.
5. Check bank statement. Cheque payments are shown as the total from the paying in slip. So far they have always cleared in the order they have been paid into the bank.
6. If a cheque doesn't clear, it is shown on the statement as a withdrawal. If you have many customers who pay the same amounts, this is where things can get sticky and you may have to ring the bank to find out who the cheque belongs to, but I think (from memory) that it will be shown on the statement anyway.

[Eric Mc]

As Mrs T said, this is an absolutely normal requirement in book-keeping.

Use the reverse side of the paying-in slip stubb (the bit left in the paying in book when the slip is torn out for presentation to the bank teller). On the stubb, write the full details of:

Who paid you
The amount they paid
The invoice(s) the payments relate to

That should provide the book-keeper/accountant with all the information they need to allow them to allocate the amounts received against the correct customers and the correct sales invoices.

Most banks do not provide this breakdown - they assume (correctly)that the responsibility for keeping this type of detail rests with the business, not them.
Having said that, I have come accross one bank that DID provide a breakdown of the payslip details on the actual bank statements - and that was Coutts. I don't know if they still do this.

[dabeeeenster]

We do pretty much what has been advised. The problem is where we have a fairly large number of cheques of the same amount that are paid in over a short period. If there is a query as to the payment/clearing of one of these cheques it can be a real pain to trace back. Just curious if other banks provide the cheque number or similar.

I guess BACS/Standing order or Direct debit is the way forward.

Thanks for the replies.

[Eric Mc]

Do you attach a "Remittance Slip" to your statements or sales invoices. They can be very helpful in linking the amount received to the relevant invoices.

[superlightr]

can you alter the bill amounts slightly....1p..2p etc?

[dabeeeenster]

Ha! Yeah we've thought about doing that. Hence the reason for my original post.

I hate cheques, but some of our clients like them...

[Mrs Trackside]

dabeeeenster said:

We do pretty much what has been advised. The problem is where we have a fairly large number of cheques of the same amount that are paid in over a short period. If there is a query as to the payment/clearing of one of these cheques it can be a real pain to trace back. Just curious if other banks provide the cheque number or similar.

A good book-keeper shouldn't have that much of a problem!

I can only imagine it's a problem if you're making people pay for their goods in advance and you need to know if the payment has cleared before you release the goods. Otherwise, I don't really see why it's a problem?

I take it you don't run a seperate cashbook?

[Eric Mc]

Up until about ten years ago the vast bulk of account customers paid their bills by cheques. It didn't seem to cause too many problems for book-keepers and accounts departments.

[dabeeeenster]

It seems a bit crazy to me that, in the 21st Century, this information is not available. The banks have to draw funds from the company that provided the cheque, so it's not as if they don't have that information available at the time. They also have the cheque number and the paying in book stub number.

Companies operated without email just fine, but that's not a reason to not use email, is it?

[Mrs Trackside]

dabeeeenster said:

It seems a bit crazy to me that, in the 21st Century, this information is not available. The banks have to draw funds from the company that provided the cheque, so it's not as if they don't have that information available at the time. They also have the cheque number and the paying in book stub number.

Companies operated without email just fine, but that's not a reason to not use email, is it?

I think the problem is that banks still use an old fashioned system that for most people works just fine.

The funds are "credited" to your account when you pay the cheques in, ie. the amount is credited to you, but it's not recorded who the money has come from, and it's not shown as cleared for however many days the banks choose. Then as a completely seperate transaction, the funds are debited from the cheque payers account, ie. the amount is debited from their account, but it's not recorded who the money is being paid to.

The payment is shown as cleared on your statement unless the funds are not in the payers account, and then it will be shown as a withdrawal (as I said above). A cheque is only matched against payer and payee if it bounces.

As Eric said before, it's not the responsibility of the bank to do your book-keeping for you. It's only their responsibility to ensure the exchange of monetary values is carried out.

[dabeeeenster]

I'm not asking them to do my book-keeping for me! I just want to know who paid a cheque in, that's all! I appreciate that, yes, it can be done without the cheque information, it's just that it would make our life easier if we had that information.

I've no interest in book keeping. It doesn't excite me, and anything that I can do to make it not as time consuming as it has been in the past I will do. That's all.

I'm not asking for a Abbey to smelt me gold from my recycled paper. As far as I'm concerned it's laziness on their part.

[Eric Mc]

Would you provide extra services for your customers for nothing?

Banks are notoriously unwilling to go out of their way to provide something for nothing - unless they can see that it might give them a competitive edge. As I said previously, Coutts used to provide this additional data on their statements. This proves that it is within their capability to do this. However, they have never seen the need to provide this data and most businesses have been able to cope without it.

As more businesses see payee details of automatic bankings on their bank statements, maybe the banks can be pressured into doing the same for banked cheques - but I wouldn't hold my breath.