Cash Management Solutions: Protecting Payments & Growing The Family’s Business

How The Bank of Austin’s Cash Management Solutions Helped Tim Siek of BT Services Protect Payments and Grow His Family’s Commercial Refrigeration Business

When Tim Siek, President of BT Services, made the decision to trust The Bank of Austin with his growing commercial banking needs, he didn’t anticipate the value that his partnership with Bobbie Bishop, Vice President, Treasury Solutions Relationship Manager, could bring to his business through fraud protections and treasury management solutions, such as ACH Payments, which monitored and helped protect his accounts from unauthorized Automated Clearinghouse withdrawals, and Positive Pay, which helped combat check fraud by verifying which checks are authorized by you for payment.

As the second-generation owner of a commercial refrigeration company, Tim is focused on providing the big retailers we all know and frequent like H-E-B (Target, Wal-Mart, and more) with the equipment to keep their products cool. They also have a service division that specializes in equipment repairs from convenience stores and restaurants, to pharmaceutical companies, blood banks and testing facilities throughout the state of Texas.

"Our relationship with The Bank of Austin has been great from day one. We actually approached them about taking on our banking services at a really interesting time in our company when we were transitioning and working through some growth and some different issues that we were facing. It was great partnering with The Bank of Austin and their team here to find creative solutions for us that helped us to facilitate that growth and those different ventures that we wanted to go into. There were some challenging times, but they stood by us, and it's been a great relationship all the way through. We've benefited greatly from being a part of their team."

Powering Growth

As BT Services has grown throughout the years, The Bank of Austin has grown alongside them. Tim credits his relationship with Bobbie Bishop and her team for their ability to help him navigate the challenges that have come with the company’s rapid expansion, and the task of bringing a legacy business into the digital age to operate more effectively. Tim was faced with the need for hiring more employees, adopting new technologies, managing remote staff, transitioning from in-person banking to digital banking, and added lines of credit to acquire new equipment to service their clients statewide. Working with Bobbie to find creative solutions to support this growth was the catalyst that allowed Tim to focus on taking BT Services to the next level.

"One of the things I appreciate the most about The Bank of Austin and our relationship here with the team is that as we've grown, they’ve also been growing as well... but we still have those relationships that we've had from the start. The ability to call Bobbie or anyone on the team that we're familiar with has been a huge blessing for us. As we continue to grow and find new needs and new issues that arise, it's always nice to be able to have people we have relationships with that can advise us and point us in a direction of something that may assist us. The ability to work with The Bank of Austin team to strategize as we move forward as a company is something we greatly appreciate."

Steadfast Solutions

Payment protection and fraud prevention are issues that every company now faces, especially during times of growth. Bobbie’s team worked with Tim to implement of checks and balances that worked within BT Services’ daily operations to ensure their business was protected from cyber security threats and other forms of financial fraud. With the use of ACH Filters and Positive Pay, Tim’s team was able to catch several fraudulent attempts just in time, which has saved them from financial loss and additional issues these attacks could have caused.

"When we first moved over to The Bank of Austin, we weren't familiar with a lot of the offerings they had when it came to fraud prevention and security. The conversation started with our needs for a line of credit and very quickly expanded into all of the other solutions that they could bring to the table. It took a little while to transition and get all of that set up, but once we did, it was hugely beneficial. Everything from the positive pay notifications, which we were able to use to catch a couple of issues on some deposits, to some ACH transfers that were questionable that we needed to look into... we were able to catch everything before it was too late. Now, we have multiple levels of confirmation and validation when it comes to actually processing payments or receiving our payments from customers."