Payee Positive Pay Issues with Font Size of Payee

Rhonda Lightcap

Has anyone had an inssue with implementing payee positive pay and the bank saying the font for the payee is too small? If so, how did you handle it. Currently the font in Blackbaud is hard coded and cannot be changed. The largest option is 10 and the bank wants between 12 and 14.

Linda Jilek

@Rhonda Lightcap
Have you had any response or feedback from Blackbaud on this? We are wanting to implement Payee Positive Pay and both Chase and BofA require a minimum font size of 12 pt. Just wondering if you have found a solution.

Camille DelTosta

@Rhonda Lightcap we are looking to implement positive pay and was wondering if you like it?

Rhonda Lightcap

@Camille DelTosta we only just started live with it last week. The upload and entry part seems pretty straight forward as I have done a similar process before. I thought there would be some kind of continuous report to be able to ensure that we had entered everything in an “issued” status but so far no luck with that. I can see what was entered manually, and I can see the individual files that were uploaded, but not one continuous list. I asked the person who did our training and they weren't very helpful on this. If I had to guess, I would say the service needs to be upgraded to include bank rec features for checking…. with only one week in we haven't had anything returned yet. I was dissappointed that we had to downgrade from payee positive pay because of the font issue because I have heard that one of the new scams is to steal checks from the mail and change the payee on the check. This version will not address that, but I'm hoping that at the very least it will help to stop folks from mistakenly cashing a check electronically a second time and then the time it takes contacting the bank. ? Also, we did have fraud on one of our other accounts via an electronically deposited check on an account where no checks are written. It was an eye opener that debit block does not cover all fraud and the time it took to close and reopen a new account, and then have ACH information transfer information updated everywhere, made it really important to put a safeguard in place.

Rhonda Lightcap

@Linda Jilek Thanks for your feedback on Payee Positive Pay. We are not thrilled with our bank, Capital One, and thought maybe the font size wouldn't be an issue with another bank like Chase or BofA. When I contacted Blackbaud about the issue, it took them a lot of searching to find another issue reported related to positive pay and the font size. Because of the low instance they advised me to post here thinking that others had found a work around but I guess maybe that isn't the case. Before posting here, I had also checked the Ideabank thinking that if a work around wasn't available, that someone might have posted it by now. But I guess maybe I will post it now. I wasn't happy about having to downgrade the service to not checking the payee.

Camille DelTosta

@Rhonda Lightcap
thank you so much for your help

Camille DelTosta

@Rhonda Lightcap
We are implementing the tool and hopefully I will be able to give you a more positive update

Linda Jilek

@Camille DelTosta
Check Positive Pay is an absolute requirement these days. We had the exact same situation occur a month ago where someone intercepted a check in the mail, replicated the check on their own checkstock but changed the payee name, and cashed it. It was not detected in positive pay because the check number and amount agreed with the positive pay file. The payee did not but positive pay does not verify the payee because it is apparently very difficult to implement as I'm now seeing. Quite disappointed that Blackbaud does not have a solution. Banking fraud is only going to increase.

Camille DelTosta

@Rhonda Lightcap I agree completely

Dawn Ariza

@Linda Jilek

We have been using name on positive pay for over 3 years now. This is not a FE issue this is a bank issue.

Linda Jilek

@Dawn Ariza Who do you bank with? We're with Chase, Bank of America, Liberty Capital Bank and Independent Bank. Liberty Capital does not offer Payee Positive Pay but the others do. We submit the name on the positive pay file to the banks but they don't compare the name submitted to the name paid. How are you able to get the font large enough on the check to pass the OCR requirements from the bank since FE only prints to 10pt font?

Dawn Ariza

@Linda Jilek
We bank with First Republic Bank who is now owned by JP Morgan Chase. I don't recall our bank every having a problem with font but I could be wrong. I will have to check with my staff. Like I mentioned we create a file from the check register export. We turn the file into a csv and manipulate it to be what is needed for the bank to upload. We had a fraud issue several years ago that lead us to a conversation with our bank on how to combat the issue. They suggested adding the name as we had not done that in the past and it was an available field. The bank has no problem verifying all fields. We do get exceptions and that is how we have caught people trying to manipulate a check we issued to another person.

Rhonda Lightcap

@Dawn Ariza Could you verify if you are printing your checks in all caps? That is what the bank recommended to improve readability of the payee name on the check as well as requiring the minimum 12pt font. I wondered if this might make a difference. Currently our vendors are not entered in all caps, and I didn't have the time with the annual audit currently in process, to change all of the vendors just to test it out when it might not ultimately make any difference.

Dawn Ariza

@Rhonda Lightcap
Our vendors for the most part are all in caps but we have a few times when we do “one-time” checks that they are upper and lower case. Our bank has no issue with either. I print checks using database view and I use the format of 6 x Preprinted single stub laser check. I am not sure what the font size is but I have also printed in NXT (not my favorite place to do this) and those processed fine with our bank also. The only issues we have is the bank name field is smaller than FE and so it has a mismatch if the name is too long.

Dawn Ariza

@Rhonda Lightcap
Maybe you can export the check run to word change the font and then print your checks from the word document.

Rhonda Lightcap

@Dawn Ariza Thanks for the feedback. We are using the 6x but double stubs and per Blackbaud, that is the 10 font size which is the biggest they have. We are also still using database view for most of our day to day operations as well. I can't imagine importing journal entries without it. On the exporting the checks suggestion, I agree that is definitely a work around, but I feel like there is too much potential for mishaps with having to manipulate every check and the inevitable interruptions while doing it. I wish I would have had the time to test the caps out, to see if that would have made any difference.