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

In the food service industry, if you’re running a restaurant point of sale system then this simple tips can greatly help you grow your business!

Checks

Checks are still widely used, especially among older customers. So if you have not been accepting checks, start soon. There are POS equipments that can scan checks as fast as credit cards, measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, electronically deposit the money, and can guarantee that funds will be delivered to you within a couple of days. In addition, the cost is typically lower than for credit cards and could add 10-15 percent to sales—and possibly more if you have many senior customers.

Accepting Credit Cards

If you do accept credit cards, you’re probably accepting Visa and MasterCard already. But what about Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. If you’ve hesitated because the fee is higher, reconsider—you may also think that it’s not worth it even a 1% difference, and because American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, customers will coming back because they’ll know that your business accepts all forms of credit cards.

Researching

Most merchants think their fees are 1.69% plus an additional $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a pricing program tier. Though fewer than 20 of 100 transactions receives 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.

Insist of Understanding Rather Than Having a Conflict

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.

Getting Your Reports Online

The post office is slow, don’t wait any longer for them to deliver you a letter of disputing a charge. Using the internet, you will know within 24 hours, which ables you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. With a quick response, it can increase your success rates and reduce your losses.

No need to scratch your head over complex credit card statements and for your bookkeeper as well.

Use the Card Validation Value and Address Verification System. They are highly effective fraud screens proven to reduce losses, and when using them correctly, you obtain the lowest possible rate for discounts.

In addition, you need to avoid hackers by being PCI compliant. Hackers can cause merchants huge fines, and drive them out of business. Find time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, be alert at all cost.

Taking Care Of Chargebacks

If you run an online business, either by internet orders or by phone, it’s always a great idea to implement the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site. This will eliminate cardholder nonauthorization chargebacks. Liability for these chargebacks is shifted away back to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. Just by following this simple step, you can eliminate up to 80% of all chargebacks and increase your profits.

With over 20 years of restaurant point of sale experience and helping businesses in the food-service industry nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits, the author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com.

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.

almost one-half of all purchases will be made on-line

This trend shows absolutely no sign of fatigue. According to IDC, by 2012, there will be more than 1 billion on-line buyers worldwide making business to consumer sales worth $1.2 trillion. Bt o B e-commerec will be ten time larger, reaching a staggering $12.4 trillion worldwide by 2012.

And behind all this swirling electronic cash are the savvy business owners who are tapping into this stampeding herd of buyers with their merchant accounts. Merchant account providers have made huge strides in making this process as painless as possible. A click or two and 24 hourse later, you’ll find your set up and ready to go.

In the past accounts were difficult to set-up, various sometimes borderline outrageous fees were charged to merchant account holders and there were a host of other problems like expensive credit card processing equipment and poor customer service. But all of this has changed because of the extreme competition in this industry. Seriously competitive, this has got to be one of the most cut-throat industries ever. The truly earth shaking changes that have hit this industry simply means that as a new merchant account holder your customer service experience will be excellent. So if you’re business isn’t growing at the pace you want it to and you don’t have a merchant account set up, you owe it to yourself and your business to start tapping into that buying demand with a merchant account.