Our office has received an updated piece of advice from our bank with regard to how cheques are being handled. Up to this point, we used to have to hold cheques from the ‘big banks’ for two business days while cheques from credit unions, provincial banks and trust companies had to be held for ten business days due to the differences in how they are processed. Now all cheques are processed centrally, our local bank is out of the loop on returned cheques and any correspondence regarding returned cheques is snail mailed to us. As a result, we are advised that all cheques must be held for ten business days before product is shipped. It seems to me that anything that slows down business is a step backward no matter how forward thinking the banks think they are … but we don’t have a lot of influence with them! Lots of other options are available to our customers including the use of VISA, MasterCard and money orders. Certified cheques are, of course, good as well but they cost money and unless the account holder has privileges that allow that sort of transaction for free the other options may be preferable. We don’t have a lot of customers who ask, but we could also do email transfers for anyone who is comfortable with that method.