iPhone Credit Card Terminal Application

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• We were able to lower their rates significantly resulting in a monthly savings somewhere between $800 – $1000 per month!
• We set them up with a plug-in that allows them to continue to enter their transactions inside of QuickBooks
• We guaranteed their effective rate would be 1.01% below their previous effective rate with QuickBooks Merchant Services.
• Our guarantee says if we miscalculated the savings we will refund the difference and lower their rate further to match our guaranteed effective rate.

You may be wondering if this is normal experience for merchants with Quickbooks Merchant Services and all I can say is from my experience this is pretty much the norm. In case your wondering what type of credit card volume this merchant had it was about $85,000 per month in Visa, MasterCard and Discover Volume. Now my company’s monthly profit on this deal is about $200 that means QuickBooks’ profit was somewhere between $1000 and $1200 per month!! Wow, that is just amazing!

So if you, or someone you know, uses Quickbooks and Quickbooks Merchant Services stop it! You are over paying for your merchant account services. If you want to start saving on your merchant account and still be able to process transactions through the QuickBooks accounting software fill out the same form my newest client did. I guarantee you will not regret your decision!

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If you want to use QuickBooks® accounting or point of sale software you may think you have only one option for your merchant account provider.  If Intuit had it’s way that would be true but thanks to some determined companies that is not the case.  That means now you can use Quickbooks and go with the best merchant account provider you can find; you are not stuck with using Intuits solution.

In recent years several companies have developed plug-ins for QuickBooks®.  These are small applications that run inside of the software that enables the user to run a credit card transaction from within Quickbooks.  So there is no need for double entry of credit card transactions or downloading a file form a payment gateway and then uploading it into QuickBooks®.

This all sounds great but up till now these plug-ins have a been a little unstable.  The merchants I had using these products were mostly happy but did experience some technical issues from time to time.  I happy to report I have found recently found a plug-in that is solid, dependable and simple to use and my clients love it.  The company that developed this plug-in is Comstar Interactive and here is a link to their website:

Comstar Interactive – QuickBooks Plug-in

Here is some of the things they say about their plug-in:

Charge Anywhere designed for QuickBooks® Financial software (Pro, Premier and Enterprise Editions for 2005, 2006 and 2007.),truly putting the power to process credit card payments in your hands.

The QuickBooks user will be able to process credit cards directly from their QuickBooks interface and will automatically apply payments to the customers’ payment screen.

Features :

• Process payments directly from invoices
• Process multiple invoices
• Automatically applies payments
• Import transactions processed via POS terminals
• Process returns and voids
• Recurring Payments

Benefits :

• No more double data entry to process credit cards
• The credit card transactions are automatically applied and posted
• Keep your books up to date without extra effort
• Record payments automatically in your QuickBooks®
• File right after processing the payments in QuickBooks®
• Free up yourself or your staff – spend more time on your business

Here is a nice summery of this plug-in that you can print out – Comstar QuickBooks Merchant.

There are some other plug-ins out there but I have not had any of my clients use them so I can’t vouch for them.  If you have a had a good experience with another plug-in please leave a comment below.

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Many merchants believe that adding a cardholder’s three or four digit CVV2 code for a “card not present” (CNP) transaction will help qualify the transaction for a lower discount rate. However that is not the case; the CVV2 code is only valuable to protect against credit card fraud and has nothing to do with rate qualification.

CVV2 stands for Card Verification Value and was introduced by MasterCard in 1997 and Visa in 2001. For ‘swiped’ transactions, the value is referred to as CVV1. Each of the card brands has its own acronym:

• Visa: CVV2 – Card Verification Value
• MasterCard: CVC2 – Card Validation Code
• American Express: CID – Unique Card Code (and 4 digits)
• Discover: CID – Card Identification Number

Merchants are able to configure payment processing systems, like payment gateways and Point of Sale software, to accept or decline transaction requests based upon the match or mismatch of CVV2 information. For example, if a merchant creates a rule to decline all transactions where the CVV2 value does not match, the authorization request could be successful with the issuing bank, but the transaction will be denied by the merchant. Even though the transaction was denied by the merchant, the consumer’s card will still be authorized.

One thing to know about this code is that PCI DSS compliance prohibits merchants from storing the CVV2 code. For recurring billing, merchants can accept and validate the CVV2 value during the initial authorization but cannot store it for additional transactions. This should not be problem since after the initial validation, there really is no value in storing this code.

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Statement Confusion

What I found interesting about these two statements was how difficult they were to comprehend. On the cover page of the statement, in bold letters, there is a summary statement that reads "TOTAL CHARGE TO YOUR ACCOUNT IS…" The amount that was shown on both statements I analyzed equaled about half of what the business actually paid. Then when I reviewed the summary of the types of transactions my confusion increased. Now I review merchant account statements for a living and I’m confused? So how is a business owner or an account supposed to decipher this stuff?

Options

The good news is that there are a few solutions for businesses that desire to run their credit card transactions through Quickbooks. The first is from a company named Skipjack . They have developed a plug-in you can download and install on your computer. Once installed the plug-in produces a payment window(see below) from within Quickbooks for you to enter your transactions. What this means is you can pretty much use any merchant account provider and still enter your transactions through Quickbooks. Go here for more details on this product.

The other option is from authorize.net . This is the most popular online payment gateway for small to mid sized businesses in North America. They do not allow you to run transactions from with in Quickbooks but they do provide the ability to download your transactions and upload them into your ledger.Both of these options charge a monthly gateway fee and a per transaction fee. However, those fees become insignificant when you realize how much money your business can save by getting out of Quickbooks merchant account jail.

Take Action

So if you want to use Quickbooks, maintain an accurate records of your credit card transactions and lower your merchant account fees what should you do? Go ahead and take a look at the websites I have linked to above and then give me a call . I will answer any questions you may have and then analyze your current merchant account and show you how much we can reduce your fees by. Go ahead take some action – the jail door is wide open. You are free to leave!

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Here is the solution: If the majority of your transactions are card not present (CNP) then go into your PC Charge and make sure your business type is set as "Mail Order" (see below).

If you make this change you should reduce your overall fees on your merchant account. Why? Frankly it would take too much time to explain it here. So just make the change and send me a thank you card after you read your next merchant account statement!

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Software Advice helps businesses in the construction, medical and retail industries make the right technology decisions. Using the Software Advice website, buyers can identify and compare software products that meet their unique requirements. After building a “short list” of best-fit products, buyers can request demonstrations, price quotes and other information. Software Advice can be found on the Web at www.softwareadvice.com. The company is headquartered in Big Sky, Montana.

Source: Company press release

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However, there is a problem with many of these plugins, they just don’t work very well.

As a result Skipjack Financial Services took all these malfunctioning products into the lab to see what was wrong and what was right. The result was a great QuickBooks plug-in that works flawlessly. If you are are using Quickbooks merchant account services you owe it to yourself to check this product out.

For more information about this product click here.

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