… in Britian anyway. Today, the board of the UK Payments Council, the body for setting payment strategy in Britain, agreed to set a target date of October 31, 2018 for winding up the check clearing system. The board is largely made up of Britain’s leading banks.

“There are many more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century, and the time is ripe for the economy as a whole to reap the benefits of its replacement,” Paul Smee, the council chief executive, said in a statement. We couldn’t have said it better.

Most of the rest of the world has been far ahead of the US when it comes to electronic payments. This latest action is just one more example. Will the US follow? Good question.

Read the whole announcement at
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091216/lf_nm_life/us_britain_cheques

Several months ago just for fun, we ran an “Accounts Payable Best Seller” contest asking readers of our e-zine (sign up for our free ezine)to select the accounts payable book they’d most like to purchase if money were no object. In response to that contest we received a note from a reader saying that she “would like a book with all the highlights and really important information out of all your other books.” Well, as you might imagine, my publisher didn’’t like the idea, but she got me thinking.

The result is our Spring Journal - which also serves as the May issue for our Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow (subscribe to the newsletter) print newsletter. In it we include a mix of book excerpts and newsletter articles. Instead of our normal 16 pages, the Spring Journal is 24 pages and contains the following articles:

 ¨ Five Reasons Why You May Not Be Getting Promoted & What You Can Do about It

¨ Five AP Scenarios the Cause Duplicate Pays & What You Can Do To Stop Them  

¨ Five Best Practices to Eliminate Invoice Headaches 

¨ Five Ways to Improve Your Vendor Relations 

¨ A Look at Benford’s Law and Its Implications for Accounts Payable Functions 

 along with excerpts from:  

¨ Fraud in Accounts Payable: How to Prevent it

¨ The Controller & CFO’s Guide to Accounts Payable  ¨ New Payment World: A Manager’s Guide to Creating an Efficient Payment Process

¨ Travel & Entertainment Best Practices  ¨ Accounts Payable & Sarbanes-Oxley: Strengthening Your Internal Controls ¨ Plus five great Short Tips to Help You Run Your  AP Function 

 The Spring Journal can either be ordered online or an Order Form can be downloaded for use with a check or credit card payment.

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Not only are checks an extremely inefficient way to make a payment, they are very expensive. Some executives believe the cost to issue a paper checks is under $1. They only include the postage and the cost of purchasing the check. But as those who live in the accounts payable world know, the real cost is much higher. Paper checks require a lot of manual handling and processing and at least at this point in time, are one of the principal ways crooks try and steal from organizations. They also are the cause, sometimes, of other poor practices in the accounts payable function that lead to further drags on productivity. I’m talking about things like returning checks to requesitioners etc. I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

It was my belief that paper checks play far to large a role in the payment process that led me to write the New Payment World book. John Wiley & Sons agreed with my thesis and published the book in 2007. In the book, I describe a best practice approach that allows organizations to take advantage of other payment tools reducing their dependence on paper checks. One of the big side benefits of not using paper checks is the elimination of the Unclaimed Property issues.

Having said all this and recommending that readers take all the steps they can to reduce their use of paper checks, I am realistic enough to know that very few, if any, organizations will be able to completely rid themselves of paper checks. Cognizant of this fact, we devoted the entire March 2008 issue of our Accounts Payable Now & Tomorrow issue to the topic of paper checks. In it, we take a look at ways to use paper checks in as efficient manner as possible - and that includes NOT returning checks to requisitioners in all but the most extreme cases. We’re realists and realize that there are a few occasions when those checks must be returned - but recommend these be held to an absolute minimum.

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