Electronic banking slipped into our lives so painlessly, we now take it completely for granted.

So many people have their salary deposited automatically, they’ve forgotten what it was like to race to the bank with that precious paycheque before the mortgage payment was due.

Those mortgage payments, too, are often deducted from personal bank accounts, as are car insurance and other monthly fund transfers.

And yet many companies haven’t given much thought to how electronic banking could help them and their bottom line in so many other ways.

From left, Todd Sheridan, Ray Huska and Glenn Hamilton of Cheq-It Ltd., which is at the leading edge of a trend towards electronic banking for business.

The people at Cheq-IT encounter that all the time. And when they do assist CFOs and other business people in moving to an electronic banking system, there’s a familiar refrain of gratitude.

“What they consistently say is: ‘We wish we’d done this earlier,’ ” says Raymond Huska, founder and president of Calgary-based Cheq-IT Ltd.

“They didn’t realize until we set them up with our software just how smooth and efficient the system is.”

It’s no surprise, because electronic banking has grown to become Cheq-IT’s specialty. Cheq-IT provides full turn-key solutions for an organization’s electronic funds transfer system, with full training and support.

Its direct-deposit system includes security features that meet even the strictest internal control standards.

Cheq-IT’s customers are primarily companies that till now have been issuing large numbers of cheques to people and companies with which they do business, but now want to have such funds deposited directly.

But Cheq-IT still provides traditional cheque-printing services to companies requiring them.

“Any organization that’s making payments to vendors, suppliers and field workers will benefit from our services,” Huska says. “Any cheque that has to go out, we can either do that electronically or via paper.”

The electronic side of the business is booming. Using Cheq-IT’s system, Imperial Oil, for example, processed 200,000 payments last year.

The trend toward such effortless transactions has taken off in relatively recent times.

“Maybe a year ago, electronic deposit wasn’t that widely accepted because of security issues with the Internet and so forth,” Huska explains.

“But just with the pure cost of producing a cheque and mailing it out and having the overhead to do that, more and more organizations are looking at how they can cut those costs. And not only the costs but the time it takes to process those payments.”

It’s not as though security is no longer a concern. It’s more a case of companies realizing where the real risk lies.

“Our clients are looking more and more at electronic because there is growing trepidation over the security of paper cheques. With the advent of high-quality scanners and better-resolution photocopying, forging cheques has become a bigger and bigger business.”

It used to be the main worry with cheques was an imperfect postal system or even the chance an envelope would fall behind a file cabinet.

“What we’re finding is, our clients are less concerned about the security of the Internet because it’s getting to be safer than using paper.”

Huska has a solid background in the business. He spent nine years with the Bank of Montreal before moving into the field of computer-equipment distribution. Then, in 1992, he founded Cheq-IT as a supplier of cheque-printing software and hardware.

“On the hardware side, we provided the equipment that could manufacture for clients the paper cheques with all the security features and the security ink that evolved with the paper. “That was in the high-end laser-printing business. But as electronic funds transfer grew, we began developing secure software.”

Cheq-IT has expanded to become a leading-edge provider of electronic funds transfer capability.

Huska’s team in Calgary includes Glenn Hamilton, Todd Sheridan and Michael Gervais, each with more than 20 years’ experience in computer systems development and marketing.

Of course, Huska and his people know their clients’ expertise is usually in areas other than computers, so they’ve designed Cheq-IT’s products to be extremely user-friendly.

“Because the software was developed with some of our initial clients, and by accountants themselves, you don’t have to be an I.T. person to run it or to use it,” Sheridan explains.

“We license out the software. We’ll go into an organization, we’ll install it, we’ll train them. Our goal is to train our clients to a level which will result in few, if any, technical issues.”

The process actually takes only a few hours, and follow-up help is readily available and typically problem-free.

“Usually it involves only a couple of returned phone calls and helping them walk through a payment process and testing their cheque files. Then they’re up and running. It’s very efficient.”

For more information, phone: 403.241.2607 in Calgary or go to www.cheqiteft.com.