Sorry I don't have a letter. It just happened naturally out of necessity.

We still have a few smaller accounts (and large ones still mailing checks), but our policy is, if the invoices are late and the checks are "in the mail" then the orders are held until payment shows ups. There's literally only a handful of accounts still doing this, but the rest figured out how to do a wire or ACH.

I have probably converted about 90% of our customers to ACH in the past 18 months. I didn't send out a letter but have sent emails out with each request for payment on past dues that if they can pay via ACH in the future, it will reduce/eliminate check fraud, lost checks, delayed mail, held shipments as a result of delayed payments, and the inflexibility of having to have someone physically in the office to print checks.

This has worked much better than I ever expected. I try to include our bank information with each and every request to a customer who is past due but not paying via ACH already and as I said, it has been very effective.

Canadian customers have a little more difficulty paying in USD via ACH unless they have a US bank and a few smaller companies who will probably never change are the only ones that have not converted. To protect them, I always suggest they call me to confirm the bank information as no one should change a remit to address without first verbally checking to make sure it's a real request.

Ten years ago, when I made the same requests, the response was always, “what are you going to pay me for switching as you're going to get the money faster” but this never even comes up now and if a customer wants to pay you in 40 days on N30 terms, they can still pay you in 40 days but it truly is a big advantage to them to start paying this way.

In the past I ran a promotion to encourage customers to sign up to ACH.

Every business is different but most of the time we are trying to influence “someone” in payables to make the effort to change their payment method. We offered a draw where the prize was a modest holiday for 2 to one customer who signed up for ACH in the next 30 days.

Through this program we converted a little over 25% of our customers to pay by ACH in a thirty-day period, doesn't matter too much what the incentive is, as long it is attractive enough to make someone change their existing behavior. If you can persuade the customer to switch to ACH the vast majority will stay with this payment method irrespective of whether they are the winner or not (at least that was our experience). Self-interest is a powerful driver to change behavior. Good luck