Decided to phase out cheques

[Rachael]

I use the Square all the time but not for daycare - I have a photography business too and in the Summer, I take Little League Team images. This is when I use it and it's brilliant. There is however, a transaction charge.

It's 2.75% per swipe. If their card has a faulty strip and you have to manually type in the numbers, then it's more. The Square doesn't take debit cards.

There is also a similar product which RBC recently brought out. The same transaction charge but at the moment, it only works on Apple products. One for Andriod will be coming soon.

For the photography, this makes sense as so many people order packages and then "forget" to e-mail their funds or go to the web site and pay through Paypal. For my day care, I personally wouldn't use this due to the fees. It's one thing for a parent to order a $20 photography package and me to lose just under a couple of bucks, but for me to lose 2.75% of my day care income for fees, that's soon adds up. And yes, you could add that 2.75% to your fees for those paying by credit card but I wonder how many parents would actually want that inflated charge and so, I doubt many would opt to pay that way.

I opted out of cheques about 18 months ago. I have one long term client who still pays by cheque but in the 6+ years they've had children here, I've never had a problem with their payments.

I had a large turnover in the last 12 months with children moving out of Province, starting school, so anyone new coming in pays in cash at drop off time on the first day of the pay period or by e-mail before drop-off on the first day of the pay period. No payment on pay day, no dropping off until fees are settled.

EDIT

When I did take cheques, I would pay them in at the bank machine on Sunday (my pay period starts Monday) as they weren't going anywhere until Monday anyway. That avoided me having to go to the bank after close of business and they were cleared on Monday morning.

I only had one client years back where a cheque bounced but my contracts used to say that if that was the case, the client would have to pay in cash in future, they were liable for the outstanding fees, a late payment fee of $5 a day from when the fees were due to when I got the cash from them, the $40 bank charge plus any other bank charges I incurred due to their missing funds. However, it was over a week before I knew it had bounced so that was a real pain for all concerned.

You can go into the bank and deposit cheques with the teller on Saturday even if they are dated on Monday. What the bank will do is hold that transaction until the date on the cheque.