Electronic Checks Promote Good Will
By Abigail A. Lorden

What’s the average time it takes to pay by check? If you’re in line behind the person writing it, forever sounds about right. Hunting for a pen; verifying date and dollar amount three times; what was that check number again?

For customers at Goodwill Industries, writing a check is now as fast as cash, thanks to a true electronic check cashing (ECC) system that integrated software vendor and reseller pcAmerica installed in April in the organization’s Columbia Willamette division.

Goodwill is known the world over for it’s humanitarian efforts—the not-for-profit organization provides education and employment assistance to the workplace disadvantaged. Its programs are funded through the sales of gently used clothing and household goods. The Columbia Willamette division’s 35 stores in Washington and Oregon have the highest retail sales in the North American region, and the group plans to open three more stores within a year.

This combination of growth and volume, according to David Gosman, president of Congers, New York-based pcAmerica, made an ECC system a necessity for the organization.

“Whenever you take a check, it slows down lines and generates a lot more paperwork—deposit slips and time spent taking checks to the bank,” he explains. “Goodwill is a business that takes a lot of checks.”

pcAmerica provided a POS solution that included highly customizable Cash Register Express software and the Epson TM-H6000II multifunction printer with TransScan digital check imaging. The software is touch-screen enabled and can be used in most retail establishments that operate on a cash register. Its industry-specific customization features can be suited to grocers, convenience, liquor or pet stores, as well as apparel or cosmetic retailers.

The printer reads MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) data off the check, which when combined with the right software, offers an ECC solution that saves time, and helps eliminate fraud and employee error.

“We’re enthusiastic about our partnership with pcAmerica,” says Bud Weist, vice president of sales and marketing, Epson System Device group. “Working closely together we provided Goodwill with a true end-to-end solution for ECC and check imaging. Testing is going very well, and the rollout is expected to progress seamlessly.”

Goodwill’s 117-register rollout began mid-April 2005, and at press time, was expected to be complete within two weeks. Over-night installation sessions allowed the stores to remain open and in full operation during the day.

“We were looking for a solution that created less paper and more efficiency for the customer,” Denelle Martin, new goods/special project coordinator for Goodwill Industires, told RIS News. Martin also stressed the security benefits of the system: once the check is run through the Epson printer, it can be handed back to the customer because the check imaging feature allows for all pertinent data to be stored in the back-office system.

The biggest challenge, according to Gosman, has been the sheer scope of the project. Specifications were required that took into account Goodwill’s entire system, from purchasing through accounting, all the way to the POS.

“They’ve been very easy to work with,” he says, speaking of the Goodwill team. “The challenge has been finding the best way to tie all of these areas together so Goodwill can cross reference the different types of data.”

To meet the challenge, pcAmerica employees went to work in the front lines, ringing up customers on Goodwill’s system “to see how the operation could be made more efficient,” says Gosman. “For every 10 seconds that you reduce the average checkout time, it’s estimated that sales go up by 1 percent.” The Epson printer was chosen, in part, because of its time saving features. “It’s not just a receipt printer,” asserts Gosman. “It can endorse the back of the check, print on the front, and takes a graphic image of the check so you hand it back to the customer and send the image to the bank;” all this with one press of a button. Customers need only hand the check to the cashier and sign a signature pad, giving Goodwill permission to electronically debit their account. The printer will do the rest: fill out payee, date and dollar amount information.

According to Gosman, “It cuts the time of doing a check transaction from 90 to 100 seconds, down to as little as 10 seconds.”