Additionally, business-to-business bill payment has other wrinkles, which electronic payment only does not address. Any given material supplier (for example, concrete or lumber) and subcontractors send our company anywhere from five to upwards towards one-hundred bills throughout the month. When we pay them, they want to know which bills they are being paid for. Generally we pay them all, but there is lots of times the special bills: A bill which is in dispute, a bill which is for personal items which a senior officer of the company was allowed to charge on the company account, etc. When the material supplier's accounts receivable dept gets a check, they want a list of invoices which the check should be applied to. Thus, even if we dropped a $ amount into their account for the monthly bills they sent to us, how do they know what bills to apply the pmt to? Now granted, some companies simply apply all payments to the oldest bills, and go forward from there by date: i.e. they're not really applying the payment to specific bills, they are just crediting your account for the payment. However, a company supplying materials doesn't like to do this. They would rather know which specific bill is unpaid, so they can present it again and say, "why have you not paid this bill?"
I'm sure there are solutions, because the Scandinavian countries use EBPayment, even for small companies. But I don't think they use EBPresentment. If for example, I focused on paying bills for my employer electronically, I would still need to send them a list of invoices I was paying for; at least I know they would want that. But let's just say I was able to electronically pay everyone. Would I lose the float? I often take advantage of the fact that it takes a check a few days to hit the checking account: For a few days I can leave the money in a higher-interest-earning account, and/or borrow less money. So the float is an issue, particularly when you're dealing with approx. $1.5 million per month in bills, like I am. |
