While I agree that you have to pick your battles, a couple of years ago we had 13, yes, 13 bad checks ranging from $3-$10. We had set $10 as our limit, so to say. Well when you take the checks into account and then add in the service charge, (ours is $5.00), that comes up to an amount of money that we were not willing to overlook. In our case it came up to a total of $150.00.
I do agree that most people are horrified when this happens, and most usually clear up the check the next day, but for those few that write bad checks frequently, we took care of that too!
For instance, say a $10 check comes back to us, we make a phone call or two and try to handle it on a personal matter. We let them know that the check for $10 was returned to us and that we were charged $5 on our account. We ask them to send in the $15.00 in the form of cash or money order to the front office, in an envelope, with our treasurer's name and their name on it by Friday.
If our treasurer cannot reach them by phone or if they do not send the money, thats when we send a letter out.
We (the Treasurer and the President) are usually the only ones' to know the identities. The only time this changes is when they choose not to pay. Then it is announced in our PTO Board meeting so that all committees (ie Spirit shop, carnival, or other upcoming evnts) know not to accept checks from this person.
We have never had anyone get rude with us ?YET?!
Thank God! It has been a good implementation for us this year.

[ 06-06-2002: Message edited by: jarsmommy ]</p>

In all fairness, you must remember that most times a bounced check is an accident and that the writer of the check is horrified. I think that with this in mind, it makes it a little less daunting for those who are looking into this subject area for the first time.

I like a lot of what JarsMommy had to say, but even when you take every precaution, sometimes it still happens. I must add that truthfully, some times it simply isn't worth the expense of chasing down a bad check, like in the $8 one I chased down last year. It just has to be marked up to the cost of doing business. Sad, but true.

BethandMiasMom: Just the same as I know who bounced checks at our school and were hard to collect from, you probably see those names in your sleep...lol... Why not take part of JarsMommy's advice and send home a special note (they don't need to know that everyone didn't get one) telling the parents, in a nice way, that you are going to go after bad checks with legal action?

Our district has rules about this particular subject and we cannot do anything more than we already do. What we do works very well for us (see 3 posts up from this one).

Good Luck!

As far as allowing enough time for the checks to clear... We have a policy where the Treasurer has a certain number of days to make such a large deposit. If she needs help inputing info she just asks for it. But she as to have those checks in te bank as soon as possible. This way there is enoug time to collect on checks before the mercandise arrives.
If it is for a carnival or a Santa's secret shop or such then we do not collect any checks from them until that check is clear. We also put a hold on any and all other mercandise (ie Yearbooks etc)until that check is clear. We also have a limit of 2 bad checks per year policy where if they write 2 bad checks for any reason, they are put on a cashh basis for the rest of the year. Not to mention they must clear up the 2 bad checks first.
This policy along with other info is passed out to the general membership at te beginning of the year and is also placed in the newcomers packet.
We have had approximately 6 bad checks this year, all have been cleared up except 1 and they moved out of the district with no forwarding address.
Our Treasurer handles all the notifications and they are signed by te President of our PTO, The Pricipal, and of coarse the Treasurer. She also sends all notifications certified, requiring a signature.
Sad but you do what you have to do!

We hand over bad checks to the Sheriffs Dept. We live in a rural area and that is who handles our bad checks when we can't get them to clear. Every city has someone who handles bad checks, be it Constables, Sheriffs, City Attorney, etc. Find out who it is in your area.

As for what steps we take before we hand over a bad check: 1) First we try to redeposit 2) Phone call 3) Letter 4) Stern letter 5) We go to the bank each Friday, the first and 15th of the month and try to cash it-the bank will help you on this- 5) Final letter 6) Turn it over to the Sheriff. Sometimes it can be collected, sometimes not. You really do have to look at it as the cost of doing business though. We collected over $36K in checks for our fall fundraiser, which made our school over $18K. We ended up with 4 bad checks, totalling less than $100. We collected on 3, one of which the Sheriff had to collect for us. The fourth one was for $8.00 and we never did get the money. The item cost us $4.00, with $4.00 profit at stake. It cost me more in gas and stamps than that. It was an acceptable loss considering how much we collected. But don't think I don't know what student sold to the guy...I'll be looking for him next year...lol...

Special note to BethandMiasMom: If you make everyone pay by money order, cash or cashier's check, don't you think you are making everyone pay for a few bad eggs? Is it worth your fundraiser's success? I should think not. Just my humble opinion...

Our local Police Department has a "Bad check" kit. You may want to check with your local law enforcement if they offer such a service.

###

Another thing our PTA does is that we allow a minimum of 10 days to allow a check to clear before we let merchandise go out. We either due this by preplanning our event to allow time for the checks to clear before we get the delivery. Or if necessary we will hld the merchandise in a locked room, or our locked trailer or at one of the Executive Board members houses until we feel all the checks have cleared. The only people notifed about a return check is the perosn who placed the order, our treasuer and president. The merchandise is automatically turned over to the Treasurer if possible to avoid the merchandise being given out by accident. A phone call from our treasurer is made and a letter is sent home in a sealed envelope. If still no response after 1 week we send out another letter. We have not had anyone not respond or pay up and the most we had to hold merchandise for was about 2 weeks.