Churches are finding out what the business world has known for a while — how to save money by processing payments in-house.

The Carreker Corporation has long been in the financial business, but recently began marketing their NeXGen Remittance software to non-profit groups, and churches in particular.

“We got into this about two years ago with Potter's House,” said Ken Harris, general manager for the Remittance product line.

The Potter's House is a non-denominational church in Dallas that has grown to more than 28,000 members in just eight years under the leadership of Bishop T.D. Jakes. Because a large congregation means a large offering, and that means a lot of checks to process by hand, Potter's House outsourced that processing, reportedly spending a million dollars a year to do so. So Harris approached the church with a more cost-effective solution.

“It's a payment application,” he said of Remittance. “It's so flexible, it really works across a lot of industries — anybody that takes in a payment.”

The software works from a scanner that reads both the front and back of a check, recognizes the document information and stores it.

“So you're not having to key in information manually,” Harris explained, “the checks that go through can be prepared to process directly.”

That way churches save time and money on data entry and bank fees.

Give in secret

In fact, regulations now allow organizations to avoid ever having to take checks to the bank at all. That, Harris said, is a savings in volunteers for churches, too.

“Also, you permanently have the data associated with those images,” he said. The data can be shared from Remittance to various church management software systems, to easily facilitate donation statements and other correspondence.

“Once they have captured all the data, they can store it or use it for many other things,” said Chan Doshi, product manager for NeXGen Remittance.

According to Doshi, a thank-you letter that would otherwise take a week or two to process can be sent much sooner. With NeXGen Remittance, a thank-you may be sent in two days — processing payments the day they are accepted and mailing out correspondence the following day.

Of course churches must consider a cost-benefit analysis of the Remittance solution. Harris said the software isn't for churches that process only 20-30 checks a week. At 200 checks a week a church could justify the scanner, he said, which costs just under $1,000.

In addition to simplicity, speed and savings on processing fees, the software also provides privacy, Harris said. Scripture says in James 2 that the church should not show favoritism. Keeping donations private could help churches with that. In the case of Remittance software, offerings are between God, the giver and the computer.