How to Better Manage Your Money, and Save Time Doing It
BY: Sam Huntington
For business owners, there’s never enough time in the day. Whether you’re meeting with current or potential clients and talking to vendors, or putting out fires and managing the day-to-day operation of your enterprise, you’ve got a lot on your plate. The best way to buy yourself time is to find efficiencies when and where you can.
Our Treasury Management team knows how precious your time is (and how little of it you have), and a key part of our role is to help you conserve it whenever possible. To that end, here are 12 strategies you can start employing today to begin saving time every day:
- Use remote deposit capture: Though we’re always working to optimize the customer experience at our drive-ups, ITMs, and lobbies, we’ve yet to figure out ways to control Mother Nature and traffic, or keep you from encountering any other possible hiccup en route to one of our offices. Fortunately, remote deposit capture -- or eCourier – saves you a trip to the bank by allowing you to deposit checks right from your smartphone.
- Use a single login for banking applications: Even if your organization has separate entities with unique TINs, we can set them up under a single login ID for ease of access. Then you can sign on one time and see all your accounts under easy-to-identify names.
- Pay with something other than cash: Everything about cash is time-consuming, so the more you can reduce coin and currency handling, the better. Consider incenting your clients to use checks, credit cards, and Automated Clearing House (ACH). And instead of keeping petty cash on hand, provide company debit and credit cards to employees.
- Set up automatic payments: Our Bill Pay and ACH services allow you to set up recurring payments, instead of mailing checks. You’ll save time and your vendors will appreciate getting their money faster.
- Standardize terms for collecting payments: Using different payment terms for different clients takes up more time and adds potential for errors in your accounts receivable processes. Streamline things by implementing consistent payment terms for everyone and keeping exceptions to a minimum.
- Embrace eStatements: No more waiting for your statement in the mail – with eStatements, you can access your account statements on the first business day of the month by going to our secure website. Business-account statement cycles end on the last day of the month (if you need a reminder, don’t worry, we’ll email you). And you can store your statement(s) on our site or your own machine, helping us to cut down paper waste. Remember, starting with this month’s statement cycle, this is the way all business clients will access their statements.
- Get Account Alerts: Use our Notifi Account Alert system to get email or text messages for a wide variety of events, including when an account balance drops below a threshold of your choosing.
- Upload credit card transactions to your accounting system: Say goodbye to manually entering your credit card purchases to accounting software – our card system allows you to create and send transactions in your choice of file formats, including Quicken, QuickBooks, Microsoft Money, and a standard comma separated value (.csv) file.
- Consolidate your accounts at a single institution: You make everything easier on yourself keeping your accounts at one bank – and of course, that bank should be Lake Ridge Bank! From streamlined online access to easy transfers of funds to the simplicity of your reporting functions, you save time and everything works better for you when you keep all your accounts with us.
- Download CardValet®: Our CardValet® app allows authorized users to turn their credit cards on and off, define spending limits, and even limit where the card can be used. Download the CardValet® app and gain control over your business credit card from the convenience of your mobile device.
- Move to payroll direct deposit: Getting employees direct deposit for their paychecks will not only save you time, but the employees will thank you later as well. We’ve seen employers offer small gift cards to employees to try direct deposit for a few paychecks to see how they like it. No one goes back to checks.
- Adopt Mobile Banking: Our Mobile Banking app offers the same real-time account information as our online banking platform, and it allows you to perform many of the same functions as well. Your login/password is the same as using your computer, and the facial and fingerprint authorization offered by smartphones can save you even more time when logging in.
I’d love to help you find more time in your day by utilizing some of these time savings methods. Contact me and we can work together to make your banking experience more efficient