To collect payments efficiently, businesses such as schools and child care organizations require processes that are timely and frictionless, integrated and scalable. E-transfers fail these 3 tests.
Etransfers are initiated by families
While there are now new features allowing for recurring payments, e-transfers are largely sent as a ‘one-off’ and therefore initiated by the parents. What that often means is payments that come in late, and follow ups. We have spoken with hundreds of school and daycare supervisors and the great majority find that this alone is a major deal breaker.
E-transfers have daily, weekly and monthly caps
Depending on your banking plan, you may have different caps on e-transfers, but what’s sure is that you are limited to some extent in how much money you can send and receive.
This is important because it can impact your child care organization at two levels:
- You may run into the daily, weekly or monthly limit to receive funds to your account
- Your customers may run into the same limits to send you funds
For instance, here are the e-transfer limits with TD:
Sending limits:
Per Transfer: $3,000
24 hours: $3,000
7 days: $10,000
30 days: $20,000
Receiving limits:
Per Transfer: $10,000
24 hours: $10,000
7 days: $25,000
30 days: $50,000
While you may not hit these limits every day or every month, do you really want to be limited in your ability to accept payments from your customers?
E-transfers offer little traceability and transparency
E-transfers are just a nameless entry on your school or daycare’s bank statement. To reconcile parent payments, you will need to keep the email notifications you receive when someone sends you funds in order to keep track. This will unnerve yourself, your bookkeeper, your auditors and your Board if you have one. Not to mention that a lot of not-for-profit organizations and charities can simply not get set up for e-transfers since they have two signing authorities.
In conclusion
E-transfers are not a great fit for childcare organizations like schools and daycares. Such organizations should favor alternative methods of payments such as credit cards and pre-authorized debit.
TUIO is the #1 billing & payments platform in the educational space. Principals, owners, administrators and daycare supervisors save hundreds of hours each year automating their administrative billing tasks on TUIO and providing families with a secured TUIO account where they can seamlessly provide pre-authorizations for bank account and credit card payments of their upcoming school or daycare invoices. If you would like to see for yourself what TUIO can do for your organization, schedule a demo and/or read some of our customer testimonials.
