Introducing Bectran Intelligence Lab — AI tools for credit, risk, and collections.
Explore the toolkit →%20copy%201.svg)
A credit manager approves a credit line. Sales closes the order. The warehouse ships within days. Then the payment sits in a mail truck for a week.
This gap between the speed of commerce and the speed of payment is one of the most persistent friction points in B2B accounts receivable. Physical checks extend Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), keep credit limits tied up longer than necessary, and force credit teams into uncomfortable decisions: temporarily increase a credit limit, hold a new order, or spend time tracking down a check that may or may not be in transit.
Moving customers to ACH or online payment portals eliminates that uncertainty. But changing buyer behavior requires more than adding payment instructions to the bottom of an invoice. It requires understanding why the check habit persists—and building a structured path away from it.
When a payment takes seven to ten days to travel from a buyer's accounts payable department to a supplier's lockbox, the supplier is effectively financing that transaction for free. They bear the risk of the check being lost, delayed, or intercepted. Meanwhile, the invoice remains open, the credit line stays occupied, and the buyer cannot place their next order without the credit team manually intervening.
This is not a minor inconvenience—it's a structural delay in the order-to-cash cycle. Every day a payment spends in transit is a day of working capital the supplier cannot use.
To move buyers off checks, credit managers first need to understand why buyers are still using them.
Manual workflows in accounts payable. Many buyers run legacy accounting systems that are hardwired to print checks. Their internal approval processes may require physical signatures from a CFO or controller. Printing and mailing a check is simply their standard operating procedure. Changing it requires them to update internal workflows, which they will resist without a compelling reason to do so.
Disconnected remittance data. Digital payments often separate funds from remittance information. An ACH payment arrives in the supplier's bank account, but the remittance detail identifying which invoices are being paid might arrive separately in a generic email. If the supplier's team cannot quickly match the payment to open invoices, cash application becomes a manual reconciliation problem. Some buyers stick to checks precisely because the check and remittance stub travel together in the same envelope.
ERP limitations on both sides. Suppliers with legacy systems configured around lockbox check files sometimes find it easier to process paper than to build the workflows needed to receive and match digital payment data. Overcoming postal delays requires the supplier to have infrastructure that makes receiving digital payments simpler than processing physical ones.
Volume and scalability. Paper check processing doesn't scale. Opening envelopes, scanning documents, keying invoice numbers, and managing exceptions is manageable during slow months. During peak seasons, when transaction volume doubles or triples, it becomes a severe bottleneck.
No one has asked them to change. In many cases, buyers pay by check because the supplier has never actively offered an alternative. If a credit application doesn't reference digital payment methods and the invoice prominently features a mailing address, buyers default to their oldest habit.
1. Set the expectation at onboarding
The most effective time to establish a digital payment habit is during the initial credit application process. Require applicants to provide accounts payable contact information specifically for digital invoicing. Include an ACH authorization form as a standard part of the credit agreement. If your team uses a payment portal, introduce it during the welcome process and position it as the standard method for doing business.
Setting this expectation early prevents the paper check habit from forming. It is far easier to onboard a customer to digital than to retrain one who has been mailing checks for three years.
2. Redesign your invoice hierarchy
If a physical lockbox address appears prominently at the top of your invoice, customers will use it. The visual design of your billing documents communicates what you expect. Move the mailing address to a secondary position. Highlight digital payment options—a portal link, ACH routing instructions, and the AR remittance email—at the top of the document. Be direct about the benefit: paying digitally clears accounts faster and keeps credit lines open for the next order.
3. Focus migration efforts on high-volume check writers
A broad request sent to every customer is easy to ignore. Pull a report from your ERP identifying the customers who write the highest volume of paper checks. Schedule brief calls specifically with the accounts payable contacts at those companies. A direct conversation can surface internal barriers that would never show up in an email exchange—and often resolves them. Buyers frequently switch once someone explains that their payment is less likely to go missing and their credit line will reset faster.
4. Solve the remittance matching problem first
If a supplier asks a buyer to switch to ACH but the payment then sits unapplied for three days because the AR team can't locate the remittance email, the buyer will revert to paper. The supplier has to make receiving digital payments easier than processing physical ones.
Payment portals solve this directly. When a customer logs into a portal, selects specific invoices, and authorizes payment, the system captures remittance data at the point of payment. The funds and the invoice match are tied together digitally. For payments that arrive outside a portal, Remittance Decryptor can extract clean payment data from any format—PDF, email, or image—and match it to open invoices without manual intervention.
Faster cash. Removing postal transit time directly reduces DSO. A payment that previously took eight days to arrive and clear now settles in one to two business days. That acceleration improves working capital and allows finance leadership to deploy funds more effectively.
Less risk. Physical checks can be lost, stolen, or altered in transit. Digital payments are traceable, secure, and not subject to mail fraud. Each transaction leaves an auditable trail from authorization to settlement.
Operational capacity. Reducing the volume of paper checks frees AR staff from hours of manual data entry. Instead of keying lockbox images, the team can focus on exception handling, dispute resolution, and proactive collections. The department absorbs business growth without adding headcount.
Buyer clarity. When a check is in the mail, the buyer faces uncertainty about their account status. Digital payments provide immediate confirmation. The buyer knows their account is current, their credit line is open, and their next order will not be delayed.
Questions to ask your team
Changing payment behavior takes persistence. Buyers rarely switch on their own—they switch when the supplier makes digital easier, explains the benefit clearly, and removes the remittance matching friction that causes digital payments to create more work than they solve.
Still reconciling ACH deposits manually because remittance arrives in a separate email? Customers reverting to paper checks because their digital payments sit unapplied for days? Bectran's AR and payments platform includes a customer-facing payment portal that captures remittance data at the point of payment and syncs it directly to open invoices, Remittance Decryptor to extract and match payment data from any format (PDF, email body, scanned image), bi-directional ERP integration that posts matched payments without manual intervention, and automated exception queues that route unmatched payments to the right team member — eliminating the reconciliation gap that drives buyers back to paper. See how cash application automation works.
300+ tools for efficiency and risk management
