As said many times pre-pay. We've had to go to the "Checks or Money Orders Only" policy. This way the money has a trail and cash doesn't "get lost" from the time the parents sends it to school and we get the envelopes. We decided we were tired of dunning people for money so we signed up with a recovery business for schools. It doesn't cost us anything. The deposited check gets one chance to clear our account, if it doesn't our bank sends it to the recovery company. They take care of collecting the funds. They add on $25-$30 to the amount of the check. They even have the authority to do a direct debit from the check-writer's account to recover the funds. The recovery company keeps the $25-30 and we get the original amount of the check back. Our bank charges us only $5 for the bounced check. So, we only lose $5 for each bounced check. I'd rather lose the $5 than not recover the actual check amount. We put a disclaimer on flyers that explain the payment policies for whatever fundraiser we do, that way the parents know what happens if a check bounces.
We also accept credit cards. This is probably one of the best things we ever did. We us www.discovernetwork.com
. This is especially good for our silent auction. It only costs us $5 a month to maintain our account with them and it was only $20 to start up and that included the card slider thingy, papers, etc. They provide all of the stickers "M/C, Visa, Discover" card accepted. We've had them for a year now with no problems. They also deposit the funds from the credit cards directly into our bank account within 3 days. The percentage fees are really low also. I highly recommend checking them out.
In response to multiple checks for order. We also allow this and write the students name and teacher name on each check. Then if check is NSF we hold that persons merchandise until payment and return check fee recovered.
Prepay is the only way the only way to go. Check with the State Attorny's Office for a package on bad check collection. It will list the law and have sample letters for you.
Some of our schools have gone to a "NO CHECK" policy because of bad checks.
The prepay works great, IF, you get one check for the entire order. WE used to require this at the school where I am the treasurer, however, this year, for some unknown reason, we accepted multiple checks per order. I think some reasoning behind this change was that last year, we had a family that skipped town with $700 worth of money collected for an order - so they people that ordered and paid, didn't get their cookie dough.
Anyway, if you have several checks, for one order, you can't really withhold the merchandise from the order, for one bounced check.
I feel you pain, I am trying to collect on more than $800 of returned checks for our last fundraiser (back in November).
I have found that the sooner I get the checks in the bank, the less that bounce on me. Unfortunately, during this last fundraiser, I was in the hospital giving birth to twins, so I didn't get the checks in, until almost 4 weeks after the fundraiser ended.
