How To Boost Your Restaurant's Sales And Lessen Chargebacks?

Sept. 1, 2009 - PRLog -- How to boost your restaurant's sales and lessen chargebacks?

* Charging Up Profits

In our world today, even a single cent counts so by adding them to your bottom line is also a big help. These steps will make 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!

* Checks

Checks may not may not seem appealing to younger customers, but their still widely used especially among older customers. If you haven’t been accepting checks, start soon. There’s equipment that will scan the check as quickly as a credit card, measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, electronically transfers the money to your account, and guarantee you receive your funds within a few days. In addition, it costs less than for credit cards and can add 10% to 15% of your 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. Do you also accept Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. You might have felt hesitated because of the fee, but reconsider—a 1% difference may not look worth it for you, 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.

* Do Your Research

Many merchants think their fees are 1.69 percent plus an additional $.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 could possibly help you more than you think.

* Understandable 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 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 in no more than 15 minutes.

* Online Reports

Don’t wait for the post office to deliver a letter disputing a charge. Using the help of internet reporting, you will know within 24 hours, allows you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. This type of quick action will increase your success rates and reduce your losses.

So there will be no more scratching of the head for 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 obtain the lowest possible rate for discounts.

In addition, avoid by being PCI compliant. Hackers can cause merchants huge fines, and they can drive you out of business. It's always a good time, so you'd always be alert.

* How To Lessen Chargebacks

For Internet and phone orders, implementing the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site eliminates all 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 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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