RBS Sweets a confectionery groupInsights
Paying a wholesale invoice by check without the lag
Checks are still how a lot of wholesale accounts pay. Here is how to make sure yours is applied to the right invoice quickly instead of sitting unidentified.
A good share of wholesale customers pay by check, and that is fine — but a check with no remittance detail is the slowest way to close an invoice. Mail time is only part of it. The rest is the time it takes to work out what the check was for.
Send the remittance with the check
A single sheet in the envelope, or an email to our billing address on the day you mail it, listing each invoice number and the amount applied to it. That one step is the difference between a payment applied the day it lands and a payment that sits as an unidentified credit while someone reconstructs it from amounts.
This matters most when a check covers several invoices, when the total is net of a deduction, or when the amount does not equal any single open invoice — which is the usual case for an account on weekly or monthly terms.
Pay the company named on the invoice
Make the check payable to the exact legal name on the invoice, not to a brand, a plant location or a parent company. Checks made out to the wrong entity have to be returned and reissued, which costs more time than the mail did.
Mail it to the remit-to address, not the plant
The remit-to address on the invoice is the one that goes straight into the deposit and application process. A check that arrives at a production or warehouse address has to be forwarded internally first, and that is where most of the avoidable delay lives.
If the payment is urgent
If an order is on credit hold or a shipment is waiting on a cleared balance, do not mail a check — call or email us. ACH or a bank transfer against the details on the invoice clears in a day or two and can be matched immediately, and we can release against a confirmed transfer far sooner than against a check in transit.
What a clean payment looks like
- Payable to the legal company name printed on the invoice.
- Mailed to the remit-to address on the invoice.
- Remittance detail enclosed or emailed the same day: invoice numbers and amounts.
- Deductions listed with a reason and a reference, not simply netted off the total.
Payment methods and terms are set out on the payments and invoices page. If a payment has been applied to the wrong invoice, tell us and we will correct it and reissue the statement.
Published 2026-09-11 by RBS Sweets, an operating group of Radd Payment Solutions. More insights