Imagine this familiar scenario: The technician Joe just finished fixing Susan’s HVAC system, and now that it’s time to take payment, he realized he forgot to bring the card reader. He awkwardly asks Susan if she can pay by check. Sighing, Susan digs for her checkbook from the bottom of her drawer, checks the amount, and carefully starts writing. "Who do I make it out to again?" she asks, not wanting to get it wrong and have to rewrite it.
By the time Joe gets back in his van and manually logs the check details on his office’s paper form, he’s already late to his next job. He drops the check onto the passenger seat, hoping he doesn’t forget to drop it off in the office at the end of the day.
Later, Joe parks the van in the office parking lot and grabs the checks he’s collected that day, including one that he accidentally dropped and stepped on earlier. He hands them to the office manager, glad that he’s done for the day.
Julie, the office manager, takes the checks from Joe and adds them to her stack that she’s already processing. She logs each payment into the system, carefully checking the details and matching them to the correct job. It’s tedious, and she stays in the office after hours every Thursday to ensure all the reconciliation is done, so she can deposit all of the checks the next day before the weekend.
Then she realizes one of the checks is missing something. She tries calling Susan to get another form of payment but no answer. With a sigh, she then calls Mike.
"Hey, you need to drive back to Susan – she forgot to sign the check she gave you."
Joe grumbles, "But I’m already on my way home. Can’t you just try calling her again tomorrow?"
Julie replies, "The last time this happened, it took over 3 weeks to get ahold of the customer and get paid. You need to fix this today."
Costs of checks
Checks may seem like a convenient or low-cost option but have hidden expenses. Accepting paper checks comes with labor costs, the risk of data entry mistakes and fraud, and the chance of it bouncing.
While checks generally take 2 business days to settle with your bank, it can take up to 5 business days for larger amounts, leaving you waiting for funds for up to a full week. There’s also no fund verification and when a check bounces, it takes 28 days* to collect payments from your customer, putting pressure on your cash flow, not to mention the cost of labor, which we estimate is $88** per bounced check. With an average amount of a bounced check reaching $2.9K***, these preventable delays have a real financial impact on your bottom line.
Let’s explore some of the less obvious costs of accepting checks and why businesses should consider faster and more secure digital methods of accepting payment.
Processing and Handling Costs
Behind every check is a time-consuming, manual process that drains your team’s productivity. Start with the technician: after finishing the job, they’re spending precious time waiting for the customer to write out a check, which rides along in the truck all day–hopefully not getting lost before it’s delivered to the office.
Back at the office, the admin team is tasked with reconciling the check. But often, critical information like the invoice number is missing. That means manually investigating which job the check belongs to, or worse, chasing down the technician or homeowner to get clarification or a new form of payment if the check has errors.
The hours add up quickly: recording and matching payments, making trips to the bank, and repeating the process for bounced or invalid checks. Depending on your bank and local regulations, you may also need to store physical checks securely for a period of time.
Now consider the opportunity cost. What could your team accomplish with that time? More jobs booked. More invoices closed. More revenue coming in.
Fraud and Security Risks
Physical checks aren’t just inconvenient—they’re a growing liability. Even though check usage is declining, check fraud is surging. Between 2020 and 2023, check fraud increased 165% nationwide, according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) found that 47% of organizations experienced fraud involving paper checks in 2023.
Checks often pass through several hands before reaching the bank, exposing sensitive customer information like routing and account numbers. They can be lost, stolen, or tampered with—especially when mailed or stored improperly. All of this puts your business, and your customers, at risk.
Delayed Access to Funds
Checks don’t just delay payment—they delay cash flow, which affects your ability to run and grow your business. From time it takes for the technician to turn in checks or arrive in the mail, batching them for deposit, and waiting for the funds to settle in your bank account, the lag adds up. And when a check bounces or is written incorrectly? You're back to square one.
Costs of Returned or Bounced Checks
It’s no surprise that banks can charge returned check fees if your customer does not have sufficient funds, which you only find out days later. The office then spends additional time attempting to collect payment, which are sometimes unsuccessful. That’s money and time you may never get back.
Poor Technician and Office Experience
Labor shortages are already challenging—manual payment processes only make things worse. From a technician’s perspective, it can be awkward waiting for a customer to write a check and they lose time that could be spent heading to the next job—and generating revenue. If they misplace the check or forget to turn it in, it creates headaches for everyone.
For the office team, reconciling manual payments is tedious and error-prone. Missing or incomplete information means extra work tracking down technicians or reaching out to customers. It also creates a poor customer experience, which office staff are left to manage and smooth over.
Consumer payment needs & trends
Your customers don’t pay their electricity bills or home appliances with a check. Why would they pay for their next heating unit repair or toilet replacement with one? There are already use cases that are gaining momentum, such as bill payments and monthly rent payments. Most consumers already share their banking information with at least one app or site as a payment method. In addition, four in ten Americans say none of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash.
Resolving check fraud is time consuming for customers: Almost two-thirds of fraud victims said recovering from fraud took a few hours to a few days, and the remaining third took a month or more. Half of the fraud victims said they spent anywhere from one to eight hours resolving the case with their financial institutions.
What to do instead
Digital payment methods offer robust security solutions that significantly minimize fraud risks while enhancing financial protection for both your business and your customer. In addition, digital payments reduce human error, lower processing costs and provide businesses with improved operational efficiency.
Pay by Bank is a new digital feature integrated with ServiceTitan Payments that allows your customers to pay directly from their bank account to yours simply and securely using their online banking credentials. It eliminates the need for paper checks or keying in ACH, saving the effort and time of manually entering account numbers or processing checks.
With Pay by Bank, you’ll benefit from:
Faster, guaranteed payments: Receive your money faster than with checks, while ensuring that your customer has the funds with real-time balance verification. No need to worry about bounced checks or returned ACH transactions due to insufficient funds.
Reduced overhead: With no paper checks to process or account numbers to type in for ACH, you can minimize time spent on manual processing, fixing errors, trips to the office and the bank, and chasing bounced checks. Easily match payments to invoices with real-time transaction data, simplifying reconciliation.
A secure and user-friendly platform: Your customers can easily and securely pay directly from their bank account without the hassle of locating and entering account numbers.
Current availability of some features may differ based on your selected payment processing partner. Pay by Bank is currently only available in the US.
*Median number of days between invoice date and when the payment was received, plus 2 days for checks to clear in FY2025
**Admin costs based on ServiceTitan survey of average time required to collect a bounced check
***FY25 average
Learn more about ServiceTitan solutions to combat the cost of checks. Book a demo to get a first look and see how you can get access.
