Is your accounting department mired in ineffective and manual processes? If you asked them today what area they’d like to improve, many would relay check printing and mailing. It can require hours of work to ensure accuracy in this process, keeping employees away from higher-level work. To reduce this burden, many organizations decide to outsource check printing and mailing.
Is it the right move for your company? In this post, we’ll review the pros and cons of deciding to outsource these activities.
What Is Outsourced Check Printing and Mailing?
Outsourcing check printing and mailing describes hiring a third party to carry out these business operations. However, you can’t just contract with any printer to do this. You’ll need to work with a transactional print and mail company specializing in highly compliant and secure work.
Your provider receives data from your files, prints a secure check, inserts it into the correct envelope using advanced technology, and mails it compliantly to the receiver. There are many steps in the process, and they all need to be accurate. When all the functions move seamlessly, you can enjoy many benefits from outsourcing.
Outsourcing has a lot of pros, but we’ll start with the cons.
Cons of Outsourcing Check Printing and Mailing
In looking at outsourcing objectively, you may include these on the con list:
- You have to relinquish some control: Some businesses may be apprehensive about outsourcing because they don’t have full “control.” To alleviate this, find a partner that has a tracking system, so you can follow jobs from when you send the data to delivery.
- Outsourcing is an expense: Yes, you’ll have to pay your provider a monthly fee for the services, but these are operating costs. Continuing to do it in-house requires operating and capital expenses.
- You may have concerns about data security and compliance: Even if another company does the work, the protection of the data and compliance are still in your purview. The best way to remove these is by working with a company with the most robust security and compliance measures and protocols.
The cons are few, and you can overcome them with the right partner.
The Pros of Outsourcing Check Printing and Mailing
The benefits of outsourcing far outweigh the cons and include these things.
Reduce Costs
You can immediately score a win for cost containment with outsourcing. If you no longer have to print and mail, you don’t need the equipment, materials, or space, which are all very expensive. Further, you’re likely to get better postage rates through a company that mails at a high volume.
Finally, your employees are no longer in the position to contribute so much time to this each month, which can help you reduce overtime or eliminate added headcount.
Improve Accuracy
With large sets of data and the requirement to get every check in the correct envelope, mis-mailings can happen. The best way to make sure they don’t is with advanced technology that uses barcodes and small cameras to validate that the check inserted into that envelope is the right one. If you don’t have this equipment, you’re at risk of this happening, which could involve noncompliance.
Ensure Checks Get to Recipients
As noted, you can leverage tracking systems that some print and mail companies provide. You can access this at any time and view your orders and all the steps throughout the job on to delivery. As a result, missing checks should be very rare.
Give Your Staff Back Time
Employees doing manual work to facilitate check printing and mailing aren’t delivering as much value as possible. These tasks are draining and time-consuming, keeping them away from other duties. Moving the production from their responsibility is a burden they won’t miss. As a result, you could see a boost in productivity.
To Outsource or Not, Is There a Question?
Outsourcing check printing and mailing is an easy and effective way to improve the process and save money. The key is working with a trusted expert in the space. All we do is transactional print and mail, so you can be confident that we’re qualified and credible. Learn more about our check printing services today.
