Cartoon: An alternative to cheques
Cartoon: An alternative to cheques

The cheque is in the post, but not for much longer
The Payments Council recently announced (press release 16th December) that cheques are to disappear in the UK by 2018. Like many other paper processes, the use of cheques is rapidly falling. Why? They are basically a pain - manually intensive to process and slow to clear. In the current financial climate businesses need cash in the bank as soon as possible, and the cheque just doesn’t deliver this. There is concern however that smaller businesses, who rely heavily on cheques (and have done for 350 years, the press release points out) will suffer and find it hard to adapt to the change. But the Payments Council state that there will be many alternatives to the cheque in place – many currently exist, and maybe some have not been invented yet.
The weather maybe cool, but so is e-invoicing
E-invoicing has come such a long way. We’ve gone from simply sending invoices by email attachment to fully integrated EIP (electronic invoicing presentment) systems that work with existing finance applications to make life so much easier. EIP systems are easy to use yet immensely powerful, helping you to get rid of paper and monotonous manual processes. They also enable you to do so much more than sending / receiving invoices online. Here are just six cool things you can do with EIP:
Cartoon: Invoicing Fun for the Holidays
