OCR

Lockbox banking help businesses to streamline the deposit and processing of checks into their bank accounts. Banks collect the checks from a designated address (usually a P.O. Box) that you provide to your customers. The bank will then process these checks on your behalf and deposit them directly into your bank account. Once lodgements have been made, the bank will send you a lockbox file of the total deposits. The lockbox file will be used by you in conjunction with a BAI2 file; also provided by the bank.

Banks will charge you anywhere between 1 and 3 cents for each character in the lockbox file. This does not sound like much but if you have a high volume of checks each year it becomes quite an expensive process. You will then need to match deposits against open Accounts Receivable (AR) invoices for all your customers. Subsequently updating your General Ledger (GL).

The lockbox file can be uploaded directly into the Cashbook software, the OCR technology will use the images to identify the customers. It will then auto-match the invoice numbers to open invoices for selected customers. These invoices are closed off and your GL is updated automatically. As the tool uses the images in the lockbox file to read the invoices, this eliminates the need for a separate BAI2 file from the bank. Thereby, eliminating those expensive keystroke charges that we discussed previously.