Online Check Printing for Family Businesses

There are over 5 million family businesses in the U.S, and those family-owned businesses make up a large part of the small business community. Businesses owned and operated by family members have a number of desirable elements that entice people to start them. The most commonly-cited benefits to starting a business with family include the ability to:

· spend more time with family members

· work closely with people you trust

· build family wealth

· create an organization around shared values and traditions

· sustain a higher level of commitment to the business’s success

· share the workload

· pass something down to the next generation

Family businesses have drawbacks, though, and spending a lot of time with family members can become a challenge over time. Some of the biggest cons about working with family include:

· not enough separation between work life and home life

· personal disputes can affect professional behavior

· fewer advancement opportunities in the company

· limited individual control due to shared management

· less time off

· too many hands in the books can lead to financial conflicts

Working closely with family members can be a challenge, especially if people have differing leadership and management styles or don’t agree on how to spend and invest the funds. It is always advisable to lay out from the beginning a specific business plan with a clearly delineated mission statement and list of goals so that everyone starts out on the same page and there is a document to refer to when disputes do arise.

Good financial management minimizes disputes

Creativity is a great asset in running a business, but there are some jobs and processes that are more efficient when they are done with consistency. While having people you trust who can seamlessly take over for you when you are overloaded with other projects, ill, or on vacation is a great thing, too many people doing the same jobs can also lead to problems when everyone has his or her own style and system. Bookkeeping is one of those jobs that will suffer from everyone adding their own creative flair.

Online tools for businesses have come a long way in streamlining and standardizing much of the bookkeeping and administrative work, and they can ease a lot of tension and headaches for family-owned businesses that often require jobs to be shared by multiple people. Online check printing is an ideal add-on to other financial management tools or can be used as a stand-alone service to help manage the books. Online check printing specifically helps family businesses run more smoothly by:

Bridging the generation gap

Running a successful family businesses often involves strategies and systems that are multi-generational. Bringing modern tech features to one of the most time-tested and trusted payment forms—checks—online check printing offers the best of past and present. Older family members who are comfortable with issuing check payments can appreciate the convenience and expediency of checks printed on demand, while younger workers can appreciate the integration options and cloud-based automating features inherent in the more cutting-edge payment options widely used today.

Allowing multiple users

Having a lot of different people manage the books can lead to errors and disputes, but it is manageable if there is a clear, standardized system in place that everyone is well trained for. Online check printing allows one main user to authorize (and limit) permissions for what other users can do so that multiple people can access the books without error or overlap.

Giving transparency to the books

With online check printing, all check transactions and check details are automatically stored in a secure registry for instant review or reconciliation. The check registry can be searched by any field on the check, and transactions are traceable to the user who initiated them so that accountability and transparency are never compromised.

Enabling remote access

When you work with family, you often can’t help but bring your work home with you—and anywhere else you go. Online check printing allows everyone to be on the same page even if they are not all in the office or store at the same time. You can take a vacation, a day off, or a sick leave and know that the bookkeeping will not suffer from the absence. Working remotely or traveling? Online check printing and mailing can be done from anywhere and can be delegated to people on site or somewhere else they happen to be working.