Boosting Sales
Today’s economy, every cent counts and adding them to your bottom line is possible despite the economic crisis. These steps helps you increase your profit and decrease expenses, as well as blocking theft so your business can grow much bigger.
For businesses in the food service industry, running a restaurant point of sale system, this can greatly help you!
Take Checks
Checks may not seem that appealing to you, but their still widely used by older customers. So if you have not been accepting checks, better 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 guarantee you receive your funds within a few days. In addition, it costs lower than for credit cards and adds up 10-15% to your sales—and possibly more if you have many senior customers.
Accepting All Cards
Of course, you’re already accepting cards like Visa and MasterCard. Do you also accept Discover and American Express? The latter, in particular, generally accompanies larger transactions. 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 since American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, if you’re known for accepting all forms of credit and debit cards, your customers will probably be more likely to come back.
Do A Research
Many merchants think their fees are 1.69 percent plus $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a tiered pricing program. 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 save more than what you expect.
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 come into terms with your statement and rates in no more than 15 minutes.
Get Reports Over The Internet
The post office is slow, don’t wait any longer for them to deliver you a letter of disputing a charge. With Internet reporting, 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.
So no more scratching of the head for both you and your bookkeeper over complex credit card statements.
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.
In addition, avoid by being PCI compliant. There are mammoth fines charged to merchants who are hacked, and even drives them out of business. Take the time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, be alert at all cost.
Reduce 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 helps eliminate the chargebacks on cardholder nonauthorization. The state of being legally obliged and responsible for these chargebacks is shifted away back to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. By doing so, you could possibly eliminate up to 80% 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.
