Do a telephone survey of banks in your area. Ask:

1. Do they use electronic check clearing?
2. If they use a clearing bank to manually clear checks, ask what bank they use.
3. Ask what the average period of float is for the bank.
4. Ask what is the bank's policy for insufficient funds: do they pay to the limit of ledger balance or to available balance?
5. What other provisions does the bank make to help small businesses avoid having checks returned NSF?
6. When does the bank make available funds from deposited checks?

Write a report of your findings and present it to your class.