A Few Simple Best Practices For Restaurants To Boost The Bottom Line.

Sept. 1, 2009 - PRLog -- A few simple best practices for restaurants to take credit cards and other forms of payment to boost the bottom line.

Taking Charge Of Everything

In our world today, every cent counts so by adding them to your bottom line is also a big contribution. These steps can help you you increase your profit and decrease expenses, as well as blocking theft so your business can grow much bigger.

Business in the food service industry, if you're running a restaurant point of sale system then this simple tips can greatly help you drive your business to success!

Taking Checks

Checks are still widely used, especially among older customers. So if you have not been accepting checks, starting soon would be a good idea. There’s equipment that will scan the check as quickly as a credit card, measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, transfers the money to your account electronically, and guarantee you receive your funds within a few days. In addition, it is less expensive than for credit cards and can add 10% to 15% of your sales—possibly more if seniors make up the majority of your customers.

Cards

Already accepting Visa and MasterCards?Do consider accepting other credit cards besides Visa and MasterCard. How about Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. If you’ve hesitated because the fee is higher, reconsider—a 1% difference may not look worthy of consideration for you, and because 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, customers would probably be more likely to come back and shop some more.

Researching For Alternatives

Most merchants think their fees are 1.69% plus $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a tiered pricing program. But often fewer than 20 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 might just help you out in saving more.

Understanding Statements

You and your bookkeeper don't have to scratch your heads over a complex credit card statement that just doesn’t add up. There are several companies that have made far more than usual efforts to simply their reports. You should be able to reconcile your statement and rates within 15 minutes or less.

Online Reports

Don’t wait for the post office to deliver a letter disputing a charge. Using the help of online reporting, you'll exactly know what's up within 24 hours, which ables you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. This type of quick action will 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.

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

Another thing, you need to avoid vicious hackers by being PCI compliant. There are mammoth fines charged to merchants who are hacked, and even drives them out of business. Find time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, so you don’t get caught napping.

Reducing 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 will eliminate the chargebacks on cardholder nonauthorization. Liability for these chargebacks will be shifted away from you 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.

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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 http://www.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.

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