Aboriginal Buying Group

Grow Your Profits

In our today’s economy, every cent counts and adding them to your bottom line is possible despite the economic crisis. The steps here will increase your profits, by boosting your sales, reducing debit card fees and expenses, and most of all block theft.

For businesses in the food service industry, running a restaurant point of sale system, this can greatly help you!

Taking Checks

Checks may not come mostly from teenagers, but their still widely used especially among older customers. So if you have not been accepting checks, start soon. There’s equipment that will scan the check as quickly as a credit card, check out and measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, deposits the money electronically, and can guarantee that funds will be delivered to you within a few days. In addition, the cost is typically lower than for credit cards and could add 10-15 percent to sales—possibly more if seniors make up the majority of your customers.

Accepting All Cards

Of course, you’re already accepting cards like Visa and MasterCard. How about cards like Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. You might have hesitated because of the high fees, but do reconsider—you may also think that it’s not worth it even a 1% difference, and since American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, your customers may keep coming back because they’ll know that your business accepts all forms of credit cards.

Do Your Research

Most merchants think their fees are 1.69% plus an additional $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a tiered pricing program. Though fewer than 20 out of 100 transactions receive the low qualified rate and all the rest downgrade and cost one, two, or even three percent. By researching for alternate programs that offer different interchange rates that may end up saving more than what you’ve expected.

Understanding Statements

Neither you nor your bookkeeper would have to scratch the back of your heads over a complex credit card statement that just doesn’t fit. A few companies have made extraordinary efforts to simplify these reports. You should be able to reconcile your statement and rates without exceeding 15 minutes.

Internet Reporting

Don’t wait for the post office to deliver a letter disputing a charge. With the help of online reporting, you’ll exactly know what’s up within 24 hours, which ables you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. With this kind of quick response, it can increase your success rates and reduce your losses.

So you won’t have to scratch a head over a complex credit card statement, as well as your bookkeeper.

Use the Card Validation Value and Address Verification System. They are highly effective fraud screens proven to reduce losses, and by using them the right way, you can obtain the lowest possible discount rate.

One more thing, you need to avoid vicious hackers by being PCI compliant. Hackers can cause you mammoth of fines, and even drives them out of business. Find time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, so you’d always be alert.

Taking Care Of Chargebacks

If you run an online or phone ordering business, it’s always a great idea to implement the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site. This can help eliminate the chargebacks on cardholder nonauthorization. The state of being legally obliged and responsible for these chargebacks will be shifted away from you to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. This simple step could eliminate up to 80 percent of all chargebacks and increase your profits.

The author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience helping restaurants nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits with restaurant point of sale systems.

You may visit POS-For-Restaurants.com for further understanding of how our national network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times.