When you’re looking for a simpler way to handle your business’s daily transactions, an eLockbox might be the perfect solution. It simplifies your payment processing, reduces transaction costs, improves customer satisfaction, and grows your margins.
What is an eLockbox?
An eLockbox is a remittance payment service that allows customers to make payments in whichever form they prefer while delivering those funds in one simple ACH deposit and compressed data file.
It operates as a modernized digital version of traditional lockbox banking. A traditional lockbox collects payments to your company (usually paper checks), processes the payments, and deposits the total amount into your bank account. This helps businesses streamline their payment processing to be faster and more efficient, but for businesses with the majority of their transactions coming from multiple digital sources, eLockboxes provide the reporting capabilities and speed that electronic payment processing requires.
With an eLockbox service, your customers’ payments are sent to a third party provider who consolidates the payments and digital transaction data. At the end of each day, you receive a single ACH deposit into your bank account, and a compressed data file of the individual transaction information for all the payments you received.
This data can then be imported into your own internal system to be searched for audits, reporting, or retrieval, or to be directly integrated into your CRM – equipping your customer-facing departments with reliable and up-to-date data on-demand.
How can an eLockbox help my business?
The benefits of an eLockbox for your business can be seen in your bottom line.
By streamlining and consolidating your payments, you get paid faster, have more accurate records, and make your customers happier by providing them with flexible options that fit their individual needs.
Here are just some of the practical benefits you’ll experience when you incorporate an eLockbox into your current payment system.
Streamlined Payments
An eLockbox acts as the doorkeeper for incoming payments which automatically integrates into your current payment system.
As your customers send payments in multiple formats and through various billpay methods, your eLockbox service screens for any inaccuracies, collects the information required from each source, and sends you a single consolidated ACH deposit along with a neatly-packaged data file with all the information you need for posting.
Whether your customers pay by eCheck, credit card, app, or online portal, the processing is complete by the time it’s deposited into your account.
This streamlined process frees your team and resources for more specialized work by automating the processing and collection of data and funds from different sources. With a trusted third party provider like FirsTech, your payments are processed faster and you have quicker access to your funds.
Accurate Reporting
With an eLockbox, all payment and remittance information is delivered to you daily as searchable, digitized data. This dramatically reduces the risk for inaccurate reporting and makes your records more accessible for easy auditing, reconciliation, and retrieval.
Once your data is digitized and delivered, you can use this accessibility in a number of different applications. Access your data for a quick reference to debt and transactional information of a customer’s financial history, or for running a randomized internal audit report. Your data can also be integrated with your CRM so that your service and sales teams can quickly access customer information directly, with the confidence that the information is updated daily.
With the digitization of check payment processing, the need and use for paper checks is eliminated. If there is a reporting inaccuracy, such as a routing or account number, your third party eLockbox provider will automatically review and correct the inaccuracy and apply the change to future payments so that they are processed faster the next time. This is something that can only be done through digitization, and it replaces the traditional frustrations of repeatedly correcting routing numbers manually.
Simplified ACH Deposits
When you don’t have a third party eLockbox provider like FirsTech to deliver your payments in one daily ACH deposit, the record keeping and posting of your transactions require a significant amount of labor and time to stay accurate and organized.
Opening up more payment options for your customers means complicating these processes even more and dealing with additional transaction costs. It’s easy to think that the answer lies in simplifying the options available in order to keep your processing efficient and your profit margin fixed. However, your customers want options and if they don’t find the option they’re looking for with you, that’s enough to churn them away to the next provider.
Not only does an eLockbox service make your reporting and record keeping easy with a simple ACH deposit and digitized data, but it also allows you to scale at speed while keeping your customers satisfied. Additionally, the third party processing reduces transaction costs so that you maintain the highest profit margin.
Faster Processing
With an eLockbox, you see the funds in your account faster than traditional bank-processed payments. Shorter bank processing and searchable digital records create a fast and efficient system that frees your resources from handling payments internally.
The result: you have quicker access to the payments made by your customers and fewer expenses to get there.
Improved Customer Experience
An eLockbox improves your customer experience by providing flexible payment options. They can now pay you with any payment method they prefer: credit card, eCheck, online payment, mobile payment, or even a paper check.
Their experience is one of complete flexibility, with options that meet them where they’re at. With an eLockbox, you can keep all payment options open and not worry about phasing out any segment of your customers.
On top of it all, your business frees its internal resources, simplifies its processes, and grows its margins. All by adding an eLockbox payment service.
How to get an eLockbox
If you’re interested in learning more about how an eLockbox can help your organization streamline its payments, contact a FirsTech agent today. For nearly forty years, we’ve partnered with businesses like yours to help them meet their objectives with a robust offering of innovative payment solutions.
To learn more about updating your business into the future of digital payments and eLockbox services, contact us or request a demo of our suite of payment capabilities.