Assignments Assignments are a service from the cooperative that allows you to divert funds from a crop payment to another party. We’ll go more in-depth on assignments in a future article, but for now, I want to focus on the assignments that need renewals. Each year, we have hundreds of assignments that end with the previous crop year. If you want to continue paying funds to another party out of the new crop year, these assignments will need to be renewed. Grower Accounting recently sent out notices to growers-members with assignments that ended with the 2023 crop year. Please be sure to sign and complete the form with the assignee’s signature and return it as soon as possible so we can process them before harvest. If you need additional forms for new assignments, they are available at www.bluediamondgrowers.com or in the forms section of the Grower Information Portal. Set Up Direct Deposit Believe it or not, only about 60% of Blue Diamond grower- members receive their crop payments via direct deposit. I know many people feel more comfortable with a physical check, but direct deposits are more secure and efficient. Why wait for the mail to arrive when at a stroke past midnight on payment day, your funds are deposited silently and securely into your bank account ? Unfortunately, with regular checks, our Grower Accounting department sometimes must reissue checks that are lost or stolen. Not counting the time that is spent simply printing new checks, we often must issue a stop payment, which racks up fees and takes additional time. To set up direct deposit, you will need to request a direct deposit form directly from your Regional Manager. For security reasons, we do not offer these forms online. Plan on sending the form to us at least two weeks prior to the first anticipated payment window, as processing takes time to complete and verify. That said, once it’s set up, it will run like clockwork for future payments. If you’re not yet prepared to drop the paper check, let me make one more appeal, this time to efficiency. Printing standard checks takes hours to print, stuff in envelopes and add postage. This is a considerable cost, given the thousands of checks we print and mail for each payment run. We all want to be as efficient as possible at Blue Diamond , because as a cooperative grower-member, you benefit from that efficiency too.
50 TH ANNIVERSARY 1974-2024
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