SPEAKER_00

Are you a business owner that's feeling like, I don't know, the small tasks just keep piling up and you can't do the work that you started a business to do? Well, take a listen to this episode and we'll give you some answers. Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Dollars and Cents, Happa Community Credit Union's Financial Literacy Podcast. Today we are going back into the commercial environment. We have Rachel and Antoinette from Hapo Community Credit Union's commercial services department. That's a mouthful of words to throw out there all at once. Uh, we are going to be talking about small to large businesses, services that can be provided, and more importantly, services that uh have a name that is way scarier than it actually is in Treasury Services. Um, this is not massive governmental level stuff. This is for any business out there. Uh, ladies, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_00

So big scary title Treasury services sounds very governmental to me, but um it is not. We'll get into that here in a little bit. Uh to kind of start, though, let's talk about uh some of the things that maybe you guys encounter when when a member comes up uh that they tell you they're still doing manually. Uh how many different services do you see that that people come in for saying that they're doing these things manually, that you're just like, Really? Like still in this day and age?

SPEAKER_04

Probably more like account reconciliation. It's amazing how many do that. Uh how many to write paper checks anymore versus doing the ACH origination, which is a much more safer means of transferring funds or or doing pay ease, whether it's payroll or vendors or whatever your payment method may be.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. I know that paper checks have definitely gone away. I still have a couple of things that I have to use them for, uh, like my HOA. Uh, they only take a paper check. Uh but not everybody's there. In fact, a lot of those services are moving to online payments or other sort of digital avenues to accept or make those payments.

SPEAKER_04

Right. And actually, far more people are using paper checks than you can imagine. And in our environment where we do have some seasonal workers, those workers don't always open up accounts. So they they can't get direct deposit on their payroll. So there are businesses that are still having to write even payroll checks. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So so much more of a manual process, uh, but probably more industry specific to some of those, or is that kind of a business size category as well?

SPEAKER_04

I don't think it's a business size. I think it's based on a need. I think there are small businesses that will do ACH origination or direct deposit. Uh most all the larger businesses do, and then maybe only a segment of their their payes will get a paper check. And so it's it's really divided based on what the need is for that particular business. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

How about you? Have you seen anything in particular that jumps out to you as a uh oh my goodness type of a moment?

SPEAKER_03

Um an oh my goodness type of moment is when we've seen business clients share their logins with people. That is an oh my shocking moment for me. Um, or sometimes someone has less left the company and they still have access to that user's online banking. Um that is definitely something where when we catch that and see that, we coach that and we fix that. Um, but that is something that's always been a little shocking to me is just uh the protections we should have in place, probably for them as the business owners and for the user themselves. So that's always been a wow moment for me.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say, yeah, you you've got your access to online banking, but that doesn't mean that that you're the only one that can get access to that. You don't have to share the password. That is that is Internet Security 101. Absolutely uh sharing passwords with people and then not changing them as an ex-employee leaves. Now, granted, most people are are you know pretty honest, upstanding citizens, but at the same time, uh you get that one person who uh decides to be malicious in some way, shape, or form not having the uh the tools to to update, change that that access to secure your business and your accounts. I mean, ooh, that that's that's some dangerous stuff. What could happen there?

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think the hardest thing is that employees don't realize what that risk is either when they're sharing passwords. If there were to be some fraudulent activity on the account that resulted from that login, who did it?

SPEAKER_00

Yep.

SPEAKER_04

If you have three different people that all use the same thing again, it's it's a risky venture. Or, you know, we still see people who write their username and password down and take it to the side of their computer.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah, all the time. We sometimes we go to office visits and okay, we're gonna change that when we get back.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I have been known to write a password down for like the first day or two that I have changed a password just because I know I'm gonna forget what random asterisk at symbol thing that ends up looking like a comic strips uh censored out swear word. Uh but like sometimes like once you get that in or use like a password management tool. Um okay, yeah, get rid of that, shred that piece of paper. Don't don't leave those things sitting out there. Exactly. Yeah, internet and account security 101. That's that's shocking that people are are still having those type of tools out there. Do you think that comes from a uh lack of technology awareness? Uh, and maybe it's an industry-specific thing. I'm gonna pick on construction for no good reason, um out building houses and not thinking so much about the computer. I've got this image in my head of like an old uh Apple IIe computer sitting on an office desk uh with a bunch of workshop tools nearby, and that just being a, yeah, this is what I print my invoices on. Um is it is does it feel like it's that type of thing?

SPEAKER_03

I mean, possibly. I think for the most part, we do a good job educating our our business clients on how they can make the changes like that. Um I'm not really sure to be honest. It just something happened. It just happens, it's a thing that happens. I wouldn't say it's something that's standard. It's just every once in a while it'll pop up and we're like, oh, okay, like we let me help you clean this up. And um, some of them don't even realize that that person still had a user built out for them. And so I think it just kind of goes along with when we kind of do the reviews, when we go over that, hey, this business user, she's really wonderful about that. Just, hey, this person, do they still have access? Do we still need this? And they're like, oh no, they quit a week ago. Can you actually change that for us?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, a week ago is actually a pretty short time frame.

SPEAKER_03

Like if it was more like a year ago, and we've seen it where it's been months and months and not a year. So I wouldn't say it's uh super common, but it does happen.

SPEAKER_00

And that every time it has come up, I'm like, oh, yeah, people that are focused on doing their business and and running their their actual work and not focused on the background tasks that still need to get done. Not everybody has system administrators in in say a small business office or IS staff to assist with those things. And if you are the account owner and you're working on this, you've not shared your account, but gotten logins for your employees. Sometimes I I can easily see someone being like, you know what, I know that I needed to do this, but then I got busy with work.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Even though this is also work.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, absolutely. Right. I can see that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So is that part of where uh a commercial services team comes in to assist with those type of things? Almost a, I should I mean, not even a contractor type of an employee that's coming in to help, but an actual service relationship with those members to kind of keep them up on board.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think so. I think that just comes into, again, when we have some of our clients, we do 90-day reviews, some are annual, and just depends. But when we do those review processes or when there's a change, if there's a change in a company and we're making changes to the entity and who's going to be on the accounts, it's always a good time for us to review those types of accesses. And so I think that is where we come in to make the help make those changes when they're already dealing with a change anyway.

SPEAKER_04

So sometimes those changes when we do the reviews, as Rachel's talking about, an employee may still be there, but maybe their role has changed. Yes. So do they still need access to this product? Are they still doing those tasks? And so we like to review that with a member to make sure that that person still has what they need, no more, no less.

SPEAKER_00

And perhaps if that person has moved out of that role, somebody else has moved into it. Uh, meaning we're just shuffling, shuffling logins and security features to to make sure that it fits their needs.

SPEAKER_04

And that's when we see that somebody who goes out of that still is with the organization, somebody else takes over that duty, and they're like, Oh, here's my username and password for me to keep doing that. Yeah. So that's when we see that happening, which which we highly encourage to never happen.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say, maybe maybe the same user account, but change that password.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

During these reviews, uh, how how do these uh conversations usually get started with with members or with uh small businesses, people that are are just coming in uh to realize that, hey, I just need a place to to deposit some some checks that I'm getting. Uh how do you see those those member relationships progressing? So like I I ran my own uh business for uh 12-ish years, I think it was. And I had a a business banking account and I had a just a business savings and checking and uh paper checks all the way, uh, walked in, said hi to hi to the tellers, loved everybody that I worked with. Um but how would you have taken uh a member like myself who is just doing everything manually? Um, and how do you see that progressing for those members?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I I feel like it really just depends on the need of the the business owner. Um, not every business account is gonna need a relationship manager, but just because they don't have a relationship manager doesn't mean that they don't need treasury services. Okay. And so um I think it really just depends on it, it's on us to listen to you and what you need and to kind of be like, oh, I think this is a good thing I need to send over to Treasury and to get our team involved. And so it's really on if it's walking into the branch like a financial service specialist to kind of say, Oh, okay, I see how this is how you're doing things. Let me get you in contact with someone who can make your business run more efficiently.

SPEAKER_04

Um because it doesn't matter the size, you know, you as an independent, smaller business, it although you may have loved going in to make your deposits and give your checks, it may have been a better use of your time um to be able to use remote deposit capture where you're depositing those checks right from your desk. Those funds hit your account immediately, they're same-day processing. So you have better use of funds, right? Is rolling over, not waiting for you to, oh, I'm gonna go in two days from now because that's when I have the time. And there's the risk component too, because those checks are sitting around. So in the event that there's, you know, a break-in or something like that happens, so there's a risk component. Getting those checks deposited, getting them locked away, moving on to your next task will help small businesses as well as larger ones.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So there are definitely some services that I could have utilized that I didn't at the time. Uh, this was a while ago, so I'm not sure if remote deposit capture was available when I was doing this. I I'm not going to talk about how long joke was. Uh there's enough gray in my beard for people to assume. But these are types of services more than just going in and depositing checks. Um what other types of services do you find are kind of the stepping stones for uh I'm not gonna say small businesses because that doesn't seem like it is uh a factor here, the size of the business, but for maybe uh younger businesses or ones that just aren't utilizing services, what are what are kind of the stepping stones that you guys see as, hey, here's your first step, your second step, or are there multiple entry points? Is it everybody starts with with remote deposit capture, or is there a bunch of different different avenues?

SPEAKER_04

Right. That's probably one of the latter projects, but it really depends. You know, Rachel will meet with them first and kind of get an idea of the types of transactions they have. Then she'll bring me in and then we'll start looking at the history from their statements to say what kind of how what the what's the number of transactions coming in, what types of transactions, what values may you be getting charged for those? So a lot of people will do if we go back to ACH origination, it's probably the most common product that people will use. And we'll look at statements and see, oh, you're using an accounting software to do your payroll, but they're charging you a per file fee, they're charging you a per payee fee. Okay, see this seven, eight dollar fee on their on their statement. Say, well, we can do that for you. And yes, we have a a treasury services fee, but it's one fee for all these products at this point, and you're already paying that fee and these transactional fees. And so it doesn't matter if you're if you're gonna have 800 employees or 80 employees or six, right? That's that product is gonna be the same for you, how you use it, how you manage your payes and your templates, and the efficiency of it all. Because that's really where it's important. Once they're in there, they're there. You're not having to redo it every single time like you do when you're doing a check, having to manually sign that every single time. And employees love it. I always joke and say, and and trust me, if somebody forgets to do their file and the employees don't have their funds, because it usually hits about two or three o'clock in the morning. So even if they're a construction worker, they can stop and get their Starbucks on their way into work in the morning. Which we all need in the morning, of course. Get their coffee in the morning. But if somebody forgot to do payroll or it hit late, and now we're doing same-day origination, which we can, they're gonna get their check that day, which they're required by law, right? But they're gonna get it some time through the day. We don't know when each financial institution is gonna process it. And so, but they'll call first thing. My paycheck's not there.

SPEAKER_03

Well, I think sorry, and I think a lot of times with the businesses that I tend to work with, they're already established. Um, they're pretty established in what they're already doing. It's just at that point, how can we make it better? Yeah. Um, and how can we start to be a part of their team? They typically already have a team of they've got an accountant, they've got an attorney, and they'll probably have one of our lenders already as well. Um, or that's the idea, right? Is they have a lending relationship, they've got a deposit relationship, they've got a treasury service relationship. Um and so a lot of times we're not really always starting from the ground up. It's probably quite the opposite. They're already pretty well established, and it's a matter of showing them how we could be better than where they're currently at. And I like to call that the discovery phase. And that's where I do ask for like current statements and I take a look at like how are they operating their businesses and how can Hapo and us make it better for them? Yeah. And that's where I'm like, hey, I think there's opportunity here.

SPEAKER_00

And then we get to Can we save you money on those fees? Can we save you time?

SPEAKER_03

Yes, absolutely. And time is money, right? And so when we can do that, I think it's pretty great. And then we go out together and we get to meet with these business owners and give them a formal proposal and show them what we can offer. And the goal is to get them on board with us.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say, so we've got ACH origination. Uh you mentioned same day as well. Uh, what other services are you uh off talking to people about that can improve not only their business life, their employees' business life, uh, and kind of simplify these processes for them?

SPEAKER_04

Probably our next product that we speak of most frequently is positive pay.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

My favorite. It is my favorite.

SPEAKER_03

She knows how passionate I feel about this.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I am as well. Uh, I think a lot of times we have an opportunity to talk to a business because they've experienced fraud. And fraud is prevalent. We're hearing it all the time. Is it credit card fraud? Is it debit fraud? Is it, you know, your house, your, you know, anything, right? Your identity, all of these things are are fraud. And and it's huge. Um, but businesses in particular are hit, whether it's check fraud or ACH fraud, and positive pay is a fraud protection tool.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Yes. So in enrolling in that, it's a simple project. Sometimes people think, oh, it's an extra task I have to do. But once you've had fraud on your account, you realize a lot of extra tasks there. Yeah, it is a time-saving tool, is really so on checks, if you're still writing checks like you, this is why you're not going to write checks because we have this. If anyone's writing checks, you definitely should have this product. Yes. Yes. So you can simply upload uh an Excel file. Okay. And it's as simple as when you're doing an email and you're going to attach a file to that email, it's no different than that. It opens up the your file explorer, right? You're going to choose your file, you're going to upload it. And then when the checks come in for remittance, the system checks the date it was written, the check number, the pay e, and the dollar amount. And if all those four fields match, then the check is paid. It seems like if one of those fields do not, and the latest trend is that they're just washing the pay e. It used to be they'd they'd change the dollar amount, they'd change the pay e, but leave the rest, but now they're only changing the pay e in hopes that it doesn't get flagged as easily.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

And it'll hit the exception queue to say, you need to review this check to see. And if it was just where it didn't get read right, you know, the maker line didn't read right or something, signature line went down. Typo in an Excel file something, then uh you just approve it. Okay. It's like, okay, it's okay to pay. And if it's not, then you return it and you don't have fraud in the account. And the great benefit of that is the fraudster doesn't realize this is an active live account. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

So feels like the one way we can kind of get ahead of a fraudster. Yeah. And so I just think it's it's wonderful. And we want to protect our members' funds, and that's one of the best ways I think we can do it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. That is, it it feels like I can understand given given the description that you said, why people might immediately, oh, it's another tas that I've got to do. Yeah. But like that's really not that bad. We like alerts on on your accounts is is one of the things that can absolutely cut fraud off at the past. We've had a number of episodes with uh Jen from uh Hapo's fraud department coming in talking about all the different ways that these things happen. This is uh yet another protection that we can put in place that business owners can put in place for their employees so that they're not randomly paying some some fraudster uh this. And it it's one of those things where you only have to be actively work with it if there is a potential issue. And it'll notify you. And like you mentioned, if an employee is not getting their paycheck, uh cash, they're they're definitely gonna call you and let you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, and this is one of those products too where we don't just sign them up for it and say, good luck. We have a wonderful team who trains them on how to use it effectively.

SPEAKER_04

And so that's also continue to work with them. It's not all when we're done. Our training will, you know, upon implementation, and then we follow up with them, depending on if it's if they're doing ACH origination, we'll follow up for their next file upload, make sure everything goes just fine. Yep. It's um positive pay, we'll check in 30 days. So we kind of have like two weeks, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days before we kind of cut loose and figure they have it on their own. Um, but fraud is a big deal. 79% of all businesses have been a victim of fraud in some point or another. 79%. So when people aren't using positive pay, they really do put things at risk. And ACH positive pay is a product that's a little lesser known and there's less fraud on ACH by far than there is check fraud. But all you have to do is write a rule. And the rule just is like, what is the ACH ID? Who is the company you're allowing to either pay or debit your account? And then you can even set a dollar amount. So say if you have your Verizon bill, right? Your Verizon bill is usually $200 a month. You write a rule for $200. If a transaction comes in to debit your account and it's more than $200, it'll hit your exception queue and you say, Oh, yep, I got an increase. I bought another phone, you know, whatever. You approve it and you can change your limit. And so it's another control as well.

SPEAKER_03

What's the control back so you can feel like you're the one that's saying yay or nay? Yeah. Um, and I love giving that to our business owners. I think it's really important that they have that.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna say it's very nice to be able to tell somebody like a Verizon in this case, no, just pull them, pull the cost for that uh from uh from my account regularly. So I don't have to constantly go and make sure that I make this payment, possibly have a missed payment, have my credit score impacted by the fact that I missed our payment. Uh and at the same time, once you've given up that uh that kind of control over that, now they're just pulling money from you. This, yeah, this does give back a little bit of that control, a little bit of that sense of safety. Like, yeah, I'm I'm allowing them to do this. It's for my benefit, but now nobody else can take advantage of this factor in some fraudulent way.

SPEAKER_04

It's also um like a control factor for businesses. So let's say you have employees that are out in the field and making purchases on your behalf for them to do their jobs, and they make a purchase that's abnormally large, it's that payment will still go through. So your relationship with that vendor is still intact, but it's going to get flagged for. You to see it before it's buried in your account and all the other transactional history, right?

SPEAKER_00

So like if if our producer, Jeff, takes the takes the company visa out uh and decides to buy a new camera one day, then it it's it's still gonna go through, but but uh our our manager is gonna be able to see that and be like, Jeff, we talked about this.

SPEAKER_04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

No new cameras without it going through the budget.

SPEAKER_04

The moment it posts, it'll get that notification, Jeff. So be careful, don't be too that's literally what I just did today.

SPEAKER_00

Did not know that he did that today.

SPEAKER_04

That's funny. That's funny. Um, so there's some certain real controls that you're putting back into the hands of the company, yeah, which is is a good thing.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so ACH origination, positive pay, all of these things, tools to one, uh help facilitate uh actual processes for the company as well as protect them from fraudulent things. What is the difference between ACH and wires?

SPEAKER_04

Huge difference.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Huge difference. Um, ACH, first and foremost, you can either have it same day or next day, or you can schedule it out. I'm gonna have that payment go in, you know, two weeks from now, whenever you want that. You can set it up to be recurring. So you've got a payment, and say you have a rent payment and you're gonna set that up and it can go every month at the same time.

SPEAKER_00

So I think a lot of people look at that and they think auto pay. Yes. And that's ACH.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Yes. So what about wires?

SPEAKER_04

So wires are a little bit different. Um, there's a little bit more risk with wires than with ACH because once that money's gone, it's gone.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, action movies taught me that. Spy movies. Wiring internationally is the only way to accomplish things, and it's very dangerous.

SPEAKER_04

So domestic wires, domestic wires is a part of treasury services. Okay. So you can do it within online banking. It is usually done for property closing, things along those lines. Uh, there are some businesses that are saying, I need you to wire money for this purchase that you're doing. And I'm like, you don't really need to wire it. You can ACH it.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

There's also fees with wires, and we get assessed fees, and so we're gonna pass that fee on to you. And we our wire fee is $25 as minimal. But the receiver's gonna get a wire charge as well. Okay. ACH there or not. So wires are perfect, they have their purpose. Um, and you and they are usually the same day, earlier cutoff time than an ACH as well.

SPEAKER_00

Because on some different ones. Now, I believe that the last time I dealt with uh wire personally was on a mortgage situation, uh, purchasing a condo for my mother-in-law. Um and uh it was one of those where it came with a lot of paperwork about fraud on wires.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, from the title company, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

From the title company, they were very up front about like, hey, this is this is a thing. And then I got messages and I was like, wait a minute, is this the fraud side of things or is this the real side of things? Made a quick phone call, got confirmed everything was good. Yeah, but it was it was very much one of those um, okay, you you've you've put a little bit of fear in me on this wire, and this is a lot of money that I'm sending for this thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So uh, but uh again, everything worked fine uh because we were cautious and we made a phone call. Yes, as you should.

SPEAKER_04

Yes, absolutely. And always call, not the number, not the number that's provided that's provided in an email or a phone call. You're gonna call back the number that you know.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04

And that is always the case because we'll get even uh employers will get an email from I mean, this is the fraud that's happening. They'll get an email from an employee that says, Hey, I've changed my banks, I need you to change my account and routing number to this. Call the employee.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_04

Don't just do it because we have email fraud and that their email's hacked, they're now sending them these changes, and now the employee is not getting paid.

SPEAKER_03

And unfortunately, we've seen that happen where they didn't make the phone call and they just went for the instructions.

SPEAKER_00

Um and so again, once those wires go out, it's yeah, those those ones are are are sent and gone type of a situation.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. With ACHs, you have about a 24-hour recourse on that to tie those funds back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

What other types of of services kind of fall into this category of of things? Making large payments or making regular payments is obviously a big one. Um, positive pay is part of that. Uh what other services are we talking about with treasury services? Is it just making those payments?

SPEAKER_04

No, you can collect payments. So if you're a gym or you're uh HOA, um we do have HOAs that use ACH origination to collect their um monthly HOA fees and dues, so they don't require their people to have checks. But we have one that will not allow them to write a check. You have to sign up for ACH origination. So there's that. Um, but you can look and see how you want to leverage that based on what your need is, right? Depending on if it's collections or payments, recurring, ongoing, one-time only payments. All those are structured. And the great thing is that they're always in your history within online banking to be able to look at those transactions and see what do you need them again? So yeah, yes, Treasury falls. And then I think the big question is when do I need bill pay? When do I need ACH? And when do I need a wire? And all of those are available through online banking. So if you're gonna pay your Bent and PUD bill, okay, and you're like, I am not gonna write a check, which I will not write a check. They're not gonna give you their account number and routing number, right? That's a safety feature.

SPEAKER_01

Yep.

SPEAKER_04

But you enroll in bill pay as a completely full free product, and your money's gonna go electronically and your your bet and PUD bill is gonna get paid on time every month. You can set it up to pay whatever your balance is, or you can set it up to push the dollar amount. Um, so you can set that up through, and that's when you would choose bill pay. It's a big company like that. They've arranged for because they have to negotiate that and sign an agreement that they're gonna allow those funds to be transmitted to them electronically.

SPEAKER_01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Um, so that's when you could use bill pay. ACH origination is when we talked about whether it's a business or employee, you have their account number, routing number, you're gonna push or pull funds. And you do have to have an agreement with them to be able to do that. So you have them sign a form when you get their account number and routing number. And then, of course, wires, like we talked about, is really good for property in particularly anytime there's a uh a um transaction that includes a closure, or sometimes it's just a flat out, it's a time.

SPEAKER_00

So do you guys regularly uh encounter members or businesses that don't understand which one is better for which situation?

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, good. So I'm not the only one. Like in in those conversations, how how quickly does it does it kind of come across to them like, oh, okay, this is when I need to be doing this, this or this other thing? Is it is it kind of a light bulb moment for for most of them?

SPEAKER_03

I don't know if it's a light bulb moment, but just understand, like, oh, there's another option and this does make more sense. Um, a lot of times when again, when we the accounts that are already established, when we start to see how they are doing transactions, it's an opportunity for us to say, hey, like they're kind of running everything bill through Bill Pay. And I think this is an opportunity to get them on ACH origination. So it's really just us seeing it and then how do we reach out to them to show them how it can be better? Um, and then I think when we meet up and have those conversations, they're oh, okay, like I I didn't know it was just that easy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, kind of the uh if you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I've got bill pay and I can I can shoehorn this into that that process of sending or or taking money. Uh, but hey, here's this other option that you have as well. And now your your your tool list is starting to expand.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And I think that's the hands-on one-on-one connection that we make. You know, we'll help them set up their bill pay. We don't just tell them here's a product, you could be using this. Yeah. We'll actually say, well, let's get your bills and let's start enrolling because bill pay is a great tool to keep in mind it'll send that payment via check as well. So you need to look and see, am I going to send that through bill pay on an electronic rail or is that gonna go on a check rail? If it's gonna go on a check rail, then I know I may have to pay a fee to utilize ACH, but it'll be a safer transaction and I'll send that money via ACH instead.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so a question of cost versus security. Right. Speaking of cost, do you see a lot of um savings to members when they start using the right product in the right situation? Uh we we mentioned earlier time is money, uh, and efficiency being part of that. Do you guys see a lot of uh companies running more efficiently doing this and what type of savings you're seeing them them get?

SPEAKER_04

I think the funny part is is once they embrace it, they can't live without it. Yes, absolutely. It's like they love it. Right by hand, and now you're using a word to quickly type it all out, and then you know you have it and save it as a template and reuse it again. You've developed efficiencies, right? And you embrace that. Yes. And online banking is no different. It sometimes, you know, especially um, yeah, I'll just put myself in that category. When we get a little older, we don't understand technology quite as quickly, right? As people who grew up on a keyboard.

SPEAKER_00

It definitely doesn't help with how quickly it moves as well, because that's increased in speed over time, how quickly those changes come about.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely. I mean, I learned to type on a royal typewriter, you know, those black, and I I found a key uh one time that had my initial on. I created a bracelet just to remind me of all the technology that's changed in my lifetime, right? And it's not gonna stop, whether it's AI or other things, right? Technology is rolling all the time, but it can be intimidating.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

And so we like to take the time to meet with someone, make sure they fully understand it because when they're understand it, we're training them in their own environment, they're comfortable, they're gonna embrace it. Yep. You just say, Oh, we've signed you up for ACH, here's here's a packet, read it your number.

SPEAKER_03

And that's when it'll fail, and they'll just, you know, be overwhelmed with it because we're just leaving. We don't do that, but no, absolutely don't.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I know what I love to do with my leisure time is read about ACH. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

That's what we all expect.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, we actually probably do like to do that, but so in general, what you're noticing is the efficiency is the embracing of this, uh, possibly an attitude change when in in employers, in uh in members, where they're like, uh, this has taken a lot of stress out of my workday.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Uh I I feel like that in and of itself uh is a benefit that most people don't talk about is the financial stress of running a business or even your personal finances and having those things organized in a way to where you're comfortable. You haven't just given up all of the uh all of the authority to somebody else to do it for you. So you still have some control, some view of it, but you also don't have to go out of your way every week or every day or once a month to do all of these different tasks. So you don't feel like you're having all of these tasks piled on you. You're like, I need to run my business.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And they and that's what they should be able to do. And that's where we come in. Um, it's part of what my job is as well, is um banking should be easy. And I think that's what we do for the business owners to be able to just focus on running their business and we take care of the banking side.

SPEAKER_04

And unlike some of our competitors, their treasury services department is somewhere else. We're local, our whole department is here. So when you have a problem, you can't get something to go, we're just down the road to help you get that file pushed. And we live in a very vibrant, robust community, right? And so a lot of our businesses have been around for a long time and those bookkeepers have been in place for a long time and they start getting frustrated because the employees have quadrupled since they were in that position, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's the problem that you want as a business.

SPEAKER_04

It is, but for the bookkeeper who started off when it was a small company, that can be very intimidating and they can struggle through that. And we are happy to go out and sit with them one-on-one again and help review their tasks and try to make sure they understand it. And here's a newer, better way to do that. Yep. And so um, that's the part that I love the most about my job is going out and knowing that I can make a difference in that business by just taking a few minutes to review things with them, how they're doing it, what could be better?

SPEAKER_00

Very cool. Uh, we are coming close to the end of our of our podcast today. Uh for the businesses out there that are listening, uh, what's some final takeaways that you guys can provide to them as far as uh what they should or could be doing, what they can look at in their own to know that they should come talk to you guys.

SPEAKER_03

I just think make sure you have positive pay if you're writing checks. Like I think that's the most important is, I mean, truthfully, it's it's hard to get ahead of fraud. And the fact that we have a tool to do that, I think it's really important that just about every business owner, if you're doing ACH and if you're writing any type of checks, it could be four checks a month or it could be 200 checks a month, whatever it might be. I I would encourage anybody who is not familiar with that product or doesn't have that product to give us a call.

SPEAKER_04

And don't hesitate to reach out to us. You know, you might have opened up that account again when you were a smaller business and you didn't have a lot of transactions, and now you're doing a lot more transactions. So maybe the account type that you were in when you started isn't where you should be now. Maybe you could reduce the amount of fees by moving to an analyzed account. An analyzed account, your treasury service fee would be offset through your transactions and your deposits. And so let's just take a look at the whole relationship and say what's the best account type for you based on your volumes? How can Treasury services help make things smoother, more efficient for you? And as Rachel says, you know, safer really with all the fraud, everybody really should be in positive pay. I'm a firm believer with her on that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right. So the last thing we're gonna do before we sign off is a series of hot take questions. So quick answers. We're gonna take one of them out of the room. Oh, okay. You wanna go that way.

SPEAKER_03

You go first. Good luck.

SPEAKER_00

We'll send Jeff to get you here in a second.

SPEAKER_04

So much for being my buddy.

SPEAKER_00

Uh oh. All right. So we've got 10 quick questions, quick answers. Yep. Wow. Should be they they should be pretty pretty quick answers. Uh, but here we go. Most businesses start using treasury services too late. Agree or disagree?

SPEAKER_04

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Paper checks are becoming a liability for businesses. Hot take or overblown?

SPEAKER_04

I think it's a hot take.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. If a business owner is still driving checks to the bank, something is broken operationally. True or false?

SPEAKER_04

Um, I would say false. I don't know if I would say that it's broken because again, they could use remote deposit capture. They could use courier service. There are other options, but some people just also need that break in their day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

ACH fraud is becoming a bigger threat than most business owners realize. True or false?

SPEAKER_04

I think all of it is becoming a bigger threat than businesses realize, you know, coming back to that 79%.

SPEAKER_00

Small businesses should care about fraud prevention just as much as large corporations. Absolutely. Most business owners waste more time on manual banking tasks than they think.

SPEAKER_04

Probably true.

SPEAKER_00

A lot of businesses think they need more employees when they actually need better systems.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Treasury services should be introduced much earlier in the life of a business.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Business owners often underestimate how important cash flow visibility actually is.

SPEAKER_04

Probably. Um, you know, and that's a hard one just because we have some businesses that I work with. Seriously, they catch everything. They're looking at it through the day. They know exactly what that activity is. And then we have some that say they haven't looked at it in a month, which is really scary. So it's it's a little all over the board.

SPEAKER_00

The businesses that scale the smoothest are usually the ones that automate early.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

All right. That's all 10. Are you ready? In the hot seat.

SPEAKER_01

What's the title of the document?

SPEAKER_00

The title of this document, hot takes, duh du.

SPEAKER_01

Wait, you forgot one thing.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, yes, there are fire emojis on it. See them right there.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00

All right, ready?

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Most businesses start using treasury services too late. Agree or disagree?

SPEAKER_03

Agree.

SPEAKER_00

Paper checks are becoming a liability for businesses. Hot take or overblown?

SPEAKER_03

Hot take.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. If a business owner is still driving checks to the bank, something is broken operationally.

SPEAKER_03

No.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. ACH fraud is becoming a bigger threat than most business owners realize.

SPEAKER_03

Agreed. Yes? I'm sorry. What's the right answer?

SPEAKER_00

Whichever one you say. Small businesses should care about fraud prevention just as much as large corporations. True or false? True. Okay. Uh most business owners waste more time on manual banking tasks than they think. True. A lot of businesses think they need more employees when they actually need better systems.

SPEAKER_03

I don't know. Do I have to answer that one? I don't know. Okay, ask me again. Can we redo that?

SPEAKER_00

A lot of businesses think they need more employees when they actually need better systems.

SPEAKER_03

True.

SPEAKER_00

Treasury services should be introduced much earlier in the life of a business.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Business owners often underestimate how important cash flow visibility actually is.

SPEAKER_03

No, I feel like they know it's important.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. The businesses that scale the smoothest are usually the ones that automate early.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right. That's all 10.

unknown

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

That visibility It's hard because I start thinking about specific business owners I'm working with, and I'm like, no, they know. Like they know what they're doing now. Did they know 10 years ago? Maybe not. But like, so that's where like where I get like stuck on some of those questions. I'm like, no, I know they know how important that is.

SPEAKER_04

Well, but we have, and I guess, and you may not hear it as frequently as we do in Treasury because there's always somebody we're working with that is experiencing fraud at the moment. Yeah. And they I had a it surprised me because it's a business that is one of those that watches it all the time. Because that's why do you want to watch it? I mean, fraud's happening for you to notice it a week or two weeks or a month later, too late. It's too late. You even your recourse options are too late, right? Um, but they asked me about a transaction uh a couple weeks ago that happened back in November.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, goodness. That that's that's reaching back a couple of months there. Like almost what? We're we're at uh a solid half year at that point.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Yeah. See, I really just think it depends on the business owner, right? Because some people will be they're on it all the time. This doesn't look right, like in it just happened the day prior. Um, and then when there's there's some who, well, I balance my book once a month.

unknown

No.

SPEAKER_00

We we've had uh a number of episodes uh with Jacob, uh FSS downstairs, who um he checks in on his uh accounts daily, if not multiple times a day. That's just the type of guy that he is, who he always knows what's going on is his in his accounts. And I'm I'm much more of a freewheeling type of an individual where I'm like, I know that things are happening, I know what's hitting, I check it out every now and again, and everything looks generally speaking correct, and I'm fine with that. Um, but I think it also comes down to uh in those situations, how tight you want to be with your budget, how tight you want to be with your operational costs. Like, are you okay freewheeling it a little bit here and there? Like maybe a weekly check-in might be okay for some of these people. But with those, with those turnaround times on being able to handle fraudulent situations, I think that does change the urgency that people should have in looking into the into the visibility of where their money's going.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely. And there's always the alert features. People don't utilize those enough. I mean, I I even have them on my personal account. If something comes in and hits my account that's over $200, I get a text that says this transaction hit, and then it says what it was, right?

SPEAKER_00

And if you weren't the one that was swiping the card right then to do the thing. Right. And if you do swipe the card, you don't get the alert, then you'd be like, what the heck is going on?

SPEAKER_04

And it can be an ACH transaction, it can be a check, it can, it doesn't, it doesn't define the type of transaction, it's leveraged by the dollar because that's the alert I particularly put on there. Or if my account gets below this dollar amount, I get a text alert on that too, which is helpful. So if somebody came in and tried to take a big chunk of money out of my account and it happens all the time, I'm gonna know about it.

SPEAKER_00

People are trying to take money out of your account all the time. Is it you? Are you are you an online shopper? We have talked about financial stress and and uh the retail therapy aspect of life uh on previous episodes.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Um ladies, thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast talking about treasury services, the the side of commercial that uh a lot of business owners maybe don't know exists and that they should be able to go and take advantage of. I know I didn't know about them when I was running my own business, but I was just a solo little guy working out of my out of my living room with my computer. Um, I probably could have utilized the services, but I didn't in the time. If you're out there uh listening right now as a business owner and you feel like you are maybe a little stressed out about all of the financial, the admin, the accounting tasks that you have to undertake for your business, and it feels like it's taking you away from the work that you started your business to do, maybe you are at a point to come talk to somebody in commercial services about what tools are available that you're not taking advantage of yet.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Ladies, thank you once again for joining us, and for everybody else out there, this has been Dollars and Cents, Happa Community Credit Union's financial literacy podcast. Until next time,