Are you a banker or business leader looking for basic definitions of common treasury management services? We’ve got the treasury management services master listing for you. This listing are services typically offered by community banks and credit unions (smaller institutions generally less than 4B in size), so there may be several missing which are offered by larger institutions.
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Fraud Prevention and Management
Positive Pay helps prevent check fraud by matching a list of checks issued each day to the checks presented for payment. If a check is not listed, it will be reported as an exception and the customer can decide whether to pay or return it.
ACH Positive Pay helps detect and prevent fraudulent electronic payments by setting up a list of approved vendors, along with expiration dates and payment caps. Any transaction outside of these parameters will generate a notification, so you can decide whether to approve or deny the transaction.
ACH Block is used to prevent all ACH transactions in an account. This is useful for account that are not transactional in nature, such as holding or sweep accounts.
ACH Filter blocks most transactions via ACH, but allows the customer to designate certain “approved” transactions in advance based on payee, date ranges and/or amounts. Many ACH filters include message triggering so the customer is alerted via e-mail or text messaging when an ACH transaction is initiated.
Receivables Management
Lockbox Services let companies manage their accounts receivable and deposits—including payments received and paid—in one place. This reduces the time and money spent processing payments in-house, so customers can focus on other business-critical functions.
- Retail Lockbox is designed for payments made by retail consumers to businesses (such as utility bills). Institutions typically use imaging technology to speed processing for large volume retail clients.
- Wholesale Lockbox services are designed for business-to-business (B2B) payments and tend to be higher dollar amounts with less frequency.
- Remote Lockbox is offered by some larger institutions to larger customers. It uses the same basic technology of Retail Lockbox but adds the flexibility to have a scanner at the customer location(s) providing convenience of accepting payments on-site, but processing them as part of the Retail Lockbox product.
- eLockbox is offered by larger institutions and is designed to help commercial customers streamline consumer payments made through their banks’ online banking and bill pay services. Instead of generating a paper check, the system is configured to transfer funds electronically streamlining the process of matching payments to customer accounts.
- EIPP can also be considered to be in the Lockbox family of products (see below for details).
Remote Deposit Capture allows customers to deposit checks from their offices making deposits easy and convenient. These services generally show up in three sizes:
- Remote Deposit Mobile allows smaller customers to deposit checks from their smartphones. This is typically a retail product modified to be used by a business customer. The difference is usually the per-item maximum deposit.
- Remote Deposit Capture is the service for commercial customer and consists of a desktop check scanner and an online service. It requires a laptop or desktop computer at the customer location and is typically used in the finance department.
- Image Cash Letter is a service typically offered to larger customers by larger institutions providing the flexibility to adapt to a customer’s electronic check handling workflows. If your customers have automated the check handling process and want to scan everything the second it arrives at their location, Image Cash Letter might be the right solution.
Vault Services and Virtual Vault Services help your business customers manage cash through a combination of armored car services and detailed record keeping. The biggest benefit of these services is reducing or eliminating the theft risk of trusting a customer’s employee to drive to a location to make a deposit.
e-Invoice Presentation and Payment (EIPP) is a service larger institutions offer to larger customers. The service sends electronic invoices and bills and electronically receives payment. After a data connection is configured between the customer and the institution, electronic invoices are transferred to the institutions systems, and then the bills and invoices are electronically sent out to the customer’s customers. Payment is received directly by the institution and then the customer is electronically notified of the payment.
Other Receivables Management. We’ve also seen many industry-specific products tailored to help those businesses collect payment faster. There are solutions out for healthcare, construction, and other industries that have long receivables cycles and desire faster payment options.
Payables Management
Integrated Payables is an advanced service typically offered by larger intuitions. This service allows the business to “outsource” the printing and mailing of checks to the institution, or alternately, process payments via ACH. It relieves the business customer from the burden of printing the checks, inserting them into envelopes and getting them in the mail.
ACH (Automated Clearing House) is an electronic payment system routing payments through the ACH network. There are many facets to ACH services for business customers and each institution’s offerings are unique. A common thread is that in general, ACH payments are less expensive for customers than checks or other electronic payment systems. The service offering of allowing customers to originate ACH payments online is one of the basic Treasury Management services any institution should offer.
Wire Transfer Payments are still relevant and meet the needs for speed and international payments. Many institutions use Fedwire, a real time settlement system designed to quickly settle time-critical payments.
Invoice To Pay is a service designed to speed up accounts payable. Vendors directly invoice (via mail or electronic means) the institution’s system and the system controls the payable from that point on. Typically, we see business customers with a dashboard where they can approve invoices for payment, then the banking institution pays via ACH, physical check or to a virtual card.
Commercial Cards and Corporate Credit Card Programs are simple ways to streamline your customer’s expense management systems and they generally fall into two categories.
- Prepaid Purchasing Cards allows the customer to handle expense management and per diems to designated employees. Easy access to card balances and transaction history are two of the features customers like about this service.
- Reward and Incentive Cards are good for consumer rebates, promotions, employee bonuses and other incentive plans commercial customers may be interested in.
Account Reconciliation services are offered by larger institutions for larger business customers. The service entails balancing the customer’s accounts each month – taking the burden of reconciling accounts away from the customer.
Liquidity Management
Cash Concentration provide an automated way to bring cash back to a customer’s master account(s) from geographically dispersed remote accounts. For instance, if a customer has many remote locations, it allows them to deposit cash locally at a local institution. From the central office, customers can pull back cash via ACH either manually or automatically based on balance parameters.
Automated Sweep Accounts cover several sweep services: overnight investment sweep where excess balances are automatically transferred to interest-bearing accounts overnight, automated loan sweep where excess balances automatically pay down on credit lines, and zero balance accounts where funds are automatically transferred from master accounts to sub accounts, such as those used for payroll, accounts payable and other uses – allowing greater control and visibility into account balances.
Think we are missing something important in our treasury management services master listing – especially ones which apply to smaller institutions? Please let us know by contacting us.
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List last updated: January 2024
