1st American of Tennessee offers account software to small businesses.

First American National Bank in Nashville, Tenn., is offering a PC-based account-reconciliation product to its small business customers.

First American National, with $6.3 billion in assets, will be distributing software called Disc Checkbook-Plus, developed by Disc Inc., Owings Mills, Md.

According to Joe Spatarella, a vice president at Disc, this new product is designed to let bank clients reconcile their accounts while offering links to commonly used PC financial and spreadsheet packages.

Electronic Matching

Disc Checkbook-Plus retrieves and automatically matches account register files against bank statement files that the bank delivers electronically to corporate customers.

After the matching occurs, items that don't match are displayed for reporting and correction. Unresolved items may be electronically forwarded to the bank for further research.

In addition, data received from the bank can be directly imported to spreadsheet and other software packages eliminating the need to rekey after each download.

Bank customers can opt to receive account information on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

DOS Operating System

Disc Checkbook-Plus currently runs under Microsoft Corp.'s DOS operating system. By the end of 1994, Disc will be introducing a Microsoft Windows version.

Jane Reynolds Edwards, a vice president at First American, said the Disc Checkbook-Plus offering is part of bankwide initiative to better serve small and middle-market businesses.

She said that bank studied the needs of small businesses in the Nashville market and saw that many of these businesses did their accounting on a PC.

"The companies we spoke with expressed a strong interest in account reconciliation so that's what we focused on first," she said.

Four companies in Nashville are currently testing Disc Checkbook-Plus. Each company represents a different industry sector and each uses a different accounting software package.

After this pilot is completed at the end of January, First American will introduce the product to its customer base.

Ms. Edwards added that in the coming months, the bank would begin cross-selling additional products to Disc Checkbook-Plus customers such as PC-based electronic payments through the automated clearing house system.

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