If your accounting practice handles the books for business clients who accept credit cards, the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb has some helpful information for you today. For one, there is this article from Accounting Today titled, Help Your Clients Save on Credit Card Processing Fees. The article offers the following Cost-Saving Strategies:
Cost-saving Strategies
Here are seven tips accounting professionals should consider while evaluating their clients’ payment processing services and helping protect their bottom lines:
1. Adopt an Interchange Pass Through and not bundled-rate programs. Interchange Pass Through programs separate Interchange fees from other fees. Interchange fees are fees dictated by a card brand (such as-Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express). Other fees such as processing and sales channel fees should be separated and transparent. With a cost-plus-pricing approach, the fees are more clearly delineated, making it easier to see and monitor what your clients are being charged.
2. Make sure the payment account is optimized for the business. Even an Interchange Pass Through program may not be set up to maximize the efficiency of the payment processing. An analytical review will help confirm the payment account is set up correctly for your clients’ type of business, with tools tailored to their industry. Correct account setup that is optimized for their business can be the single greatest area of cost savings, often exceeding 40 percent.
3. Understand so-called “non-qualified” transactions. Recognize why certain transactions are classified as non-qualified, and understand the additional costs for these transactions. In general, if the terms “mid-qualified” and/or “non-qualified” appear on a client’s merchant processing statement, opportunities exist for you to guide them toward savings. Typically, a few simple improvements to their business processes will reduce or eliminate the number of non-qualified transactions a company has and thereby reduce their costs.
4. Understand all fees. Many fees are elective and can often be reduced or eliminated completely. If it is not an Interchange fee or industry-dictated fee, it should be questioned.
5. Use the Address Verification System. Including a customer’s billing address and zip code when entering a credit card transaction is an easy and effective way to reduce your clients’ costs and risks of compromised data and fraud.
6. Remove punitive contract termination penalties. Merchant account contracts are inherently confusing and often punitive, so clients benefit from guidance walking through them. Review their contracts and help them understand the terms for terminating an account. Also advise your clients to work with vendors that do not penalize them for canceling a merchant account.
7. Do not lease equipment. Leasing credit card and check processing equipment is expensive. In many cases, businesses pay five times more for equipment when they lease. It’s usually best to advise your clients to purchase outright.
Another great resource MoneyThumb discovered for accountants with business clients who accept credit cards is this comprehensive guide from CPA Charge titled The CPAs Ultimate Guide to Credit Card Processing. The guide is totally free. Just follow this link and enter your email address to download the free guide.
And last but not least, we'd like to share this offer of a free lunch for your accounting team. The offer is from Receipt Bank. All you need to do to have Receipt Bank foot the bill for your accounting team's lunch is to try their free demo before October 31, 2018.
The team at the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb hopes these offerings we are sharing are a great help to our readers. We hope you have a great weekend.
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