An Indiana community bank is installing an electronic forms system to cut paper-related costs.
Star Financial Group Inc. of Marion said it expects to have CheckGard, a product of Bottomline Technologies Inc. of Portsmouth, N.H., up and running in September.
The PC-based system will enhance Star's automated disbursement services for commercial clients and add electronic forms capabilities at branches, the $750-million asset bank said.
CheckGard prints various financial forms and paves the way for financial electronic data interchange applications. Financial EDI is the exchange of payment and related information in standard computer formats.
Start said CheckGard will be used to create financial documents including checks, money orders, loan coupon books, and deposit slips in its 33 branches.
At bank headquarters, the system will be used to produce accounts payable and payroll documents for internal use and for outsourcing customers of the bank's data processing arm, Star Financial Systems.
The new system will save money and bring other benefits, said Dennis Banks, Star Financial Systems vice president.
CheckGard will reduce the bank's stock of different types of forms, he said. The system creates various kinds of forms on the same sort of paper.
He added that the system will eliminate manual logging of individual items, such as money orders, because it tracks each document as it's produced.
CheckGard also has a positive pay interface, which lets business customers produce electronic daily records of all checks written, guarding against check fraud.
Positive pay compares the customer's record of issued checks with actual checks presented for payment, so exceptions can be dealt with quickly.
Mr. Banks said the positive pay feature will ease the transition to financial EDI, which the bank expects to be on-line by the middle of next year. Star will use financial EDI to provide commercial customers with next-day reconcilement.
