Cheltenham Borough Council
The Brief
Cheltenham Borough Council required a solution to help manage a large volume of cheques efficiently and improve the payment processes. “We process approximately 800 cheques per month and found it to be a time consuming activity. We had already sustained a long term relationship with Kalamazoo; they had produced our secure cheques for many years, and we had great confidence in their ability to manage a larger scale project. For that reason we approached Kalamazoo to provide a secure cheque printing solution” comments Andy Smith, Payments Manager for the Cheltenham Borough Council.
Prior to implementing the Cheqflow solution the process for producing secure cheques was prolonged and frustrating. Andy continues, “Data had to be sent to our IT department for processing, however this was never seen as a priority and we often had to wait a significant length of time to see our cheques come into fruition. Even then we still had the timely process of getting them signed by key personnel”.
Our Solution
In 2006 Kalamazoo implemented the Cheqflow solution, in conjunction with a Troy MICR 2420 printer and secure printed cheques. The system enabled the Payments Manager to take back complete control of all payments and significantly improve how quickly and efficiently payments could be processed. The Cheqflow solution takes care of the whole cycle; from the creation, printing and authorisation of all cheques.
Further to the improvements in efficiency, the Cheqflow solution provided Cheltenham Borough Council with multiple levels of security and protection against unsolicited payments. Senior management have the ability to set permissions for specific roles and allocate dedicated personnel to raise company cheques. In addition the reports enable management to monitor all cheque transactions via strict audit trails.
The Result
Andy Smith concludes, “The Cheqflow system has made a significant improvements in terms of efficiency and without doubt helped to prevent the risk of fraud substantially.”
“Our confidence in the solution, and Kalamazoo, means we will be working closely with Kalamazoo over the coming months to upgrade our system to the latest version of the cheque printing solution, Cheqflow2.”
< back