How critical is your business support for your merchant credit card account? Too often you find out when time is of the essence.

US Business Finance Corp is a proven trustworthy financing and business services ally to small businesses and mid-size businesses with our efficient alternative business funding programs and credit card processing services. In a very competitive marketplace, USBFC recognizes that our responsive and “go the extra mile” customer service is an asset that our customers value highly. When our customers need help, we know that their time is money and that nothing less than the fastest and best customer service response is acceptable.

If you are a start-up enterprise or seeking a merchant credit card service processor with better terms, contact our merchant account specialists. We have the experience and network to bring your business the best service at the best overall price. Our responsive customer service has the track record of keeping businesses very satisfied with their merchant account experience.

For high risk businesses, USBFC specializes in getting your business the best rates and working with you and your employees to position your business for better rates in the future. Educating your employees is an investment in customer service we gladly make for our clients to minimize the chance any employee mistakes trigger penalties that affect your rates and your merchant account status. We work to see that your high risk merchant credit account serves you to improve your income streams, not create another expense and headache for you.

Contact USBFC to see what steps we can take to get you into a merchant account situation that provides you with the best customer support, overall rates, and the ability to leverage your credit card sales with a company cash advance when and if your company needs it. US Business Finance Corp builds our success on your business’s success – we enjoy the long-term business relationships we have with our customers!

US Business Finance Corp specializes in helping start-ups and other high risk merchant credit card account businesses both obtain high risk card processing services for Visa and MasterCard and train owners and employees on the best ways to improve their rates.

Training, historically, has helped owners minimize small errors that have large repercussions in their merchant ratings. Three basic training rules are:

1. Never accept foreign credit cards or suspicious card.
2. Avoid chargebacks, whatever it takes. If possible assign one person to customer service to make sure you have a satisfied customer and keep chargebacks to an absolute minimum.
3. Never run a charge for products other than the ones you sell. Offering to take a charge for a friend, regardless of how close a friend they are, may lose you your merchant account. If your credit card processing company detects a major change in your charging levels or the products you sell, they may terminate your merchant account. Once your merchant account is terminated, you will have a very hard time getting a new merchant account from any provider until five years pass.

With consistently good months of no chargebacks and no other activity that undermines your merchant account, US Business Finance Corp can work with you and the merchant credit card processing company to reduce both your rate and the amount of funds in your holdback account (funds held in reserve to cover chargebacks).

While risk in business is natural (and often the more risk the higher the potential profit return), US Business Finance Corp works with entrepreneurs to reduce the risk of higher rates and an unnecessary assessment of high risk rating. With our knowledge of credit card processing services, we can help middle risk businesses, such as auto service centers, furniture stores and computer stores better ratings.

Often financing institutions only have two rate categories – low risk and high risk. This unfairly penalizes the many in-between businesses. US Business Finance Corp finds you the best rates and fees for your small or mid-size business.

If your start-up small business or high risk business is in need of a merchant credit card account or better rates for your high risk rating, contact the Visa and MasterCard experts at US Business Finance Corp – we’ll save you money while you make money!

A Private Employer Benefit Plan (PEB) is an alternative retirement plan to the better known 401(k)s and IRAs. These non-qualified deferred compensation plans offer a legal way to fund your small business’s retirement plan with pre-tax dollars. These benefit plans work for:

• Privately held C and S corporations,
• Partnerships and limited liability partnerships (LLP),
• Limited liability corporations (LLC)
• Professional corporations, and
• Sole proprietorships.

Small business owners utilizing 401(k) plans are finding that in an economic downturn, employees stop saving in order to meet bills. With reduced employee participation their retirement plan begins to look “top heavy” to the IRS. Avoid unnecessary penalties and paying too much in taxes by talking to USBFC’s financial advisers about which of our new PEBs could work best for your business. Our retirement planning services utilize the IRS 409, 412 or 419 plans which can be funded by life insurance and fixed annuity products.

Our retirement plans keep you from unnecessarily paying out more in pre-tax funds and keep you from penalizing top-heavy 401(k) situations. Your retirement investment grows in a tax-deferred manner, making the most use of your growing retirement principal. Upon retirement, the deferred compensation you have accrued becomes your retirement income that you can use largely tax-free!

An added benefit of creating a Private Employer Benefit Plan for your company is another way to financially reward and retain your key personnel. Since some of the plans allow substantial annual contribution limits, they are very well suited to owners who are just starting to fund their retirement savings or have realized that the amount they have set aside may not be adequate in today’s volatile market.

Whether your small business is a start-up or you are a business owner desiring to quickly build equity in your retirement account, contact USBFC’s financial advisors to explore the financially rewarding possibilities a Private Employer Benefit Plan can have for you, your family and your employees.

The foundational training is centered on the company culture, which covers the basics such as who is the employee accountable to and what are they responsible for, dress code, using the time clock, calling when there are schedule changes, and use of company property. Make sure there are no “unspoken rules” that carry greater weight than the documented rules. Unspoken rules can undermine the success of the best systems.

When training employees, by following the money trail, the employee has a logical framework to couch their new found knowledge. Start with product training, possibly on a graduated basis for more involved products, so they know what the company offers – and what problems the products solve.

The next step in the money trail is sales. Sales training ranges from operational steps such as working the cash register and credit card terminals to the customer service area of handling irate customers, finding the right product for clients to soliciting customer feedback. The US Business Finance Corp team provides our merchant credit card account owners and employees training on both the credit card “point of sale” terminals and the handling of various customer situations. We believe credit cards should benefit your company with greater income and by minimizing “operator error” and credit requests through training we can help improve your business and protect your profit margins.

The last steps are usually the back office steps of handling payroll, invoicing and bill collecting. Though maybe somewhat tedious, one place most businesses have room for improvement is timely billing on their outstanding accounts. The sooner invoices are sent, the sooner clients will send their payments and keep the cash flow at the necessary level to meet the business’s own bills.

Documentation in some areas can be as simple as block diagrams or photographs of steps in a process. Simplifying steps aids in their ability to be remembered as well as the time it takes to document the steps. And it help keep documentation maintenance time low so its more likely that your training material remains current to your business’s innovations and improvements.

US Business Finance Corp realizes the tremendous benefits to consistent training as well as consistent customer service and help from your credit card service provider. We assist our customers, not just in providing great rates, but also in providing the training necessary to protect your merchant account status and your rates. Contact our small business financing team and credit card services experts today.

Health insurance helps attract key talent and becomes a bargaining chip in the hiring practice. Many companies have sought for a middle of the road solution to both help their employees and avoid the hefty health insurance increases. Weighing in on the decision was the nature of the insurance – to keep the insurance cost down, many companies covered employees for catastrophic illnesses with high deductibles. They found that most employees did not benefit from the coverages and looked for alternatives that would better benefit most of their employees.

The 2003 legislative changes created Health Savings Accounts (HSA) – a tax-exempt savings account that could be funded on a monthly basis by employers or a pre-tax contribution by the employee, depending on how the account is set up. Employees could tap into their individual accounts to pay for simple doctor visits. The accounts are not limited to the employee’s health care, but extend to their family also. These accounts work to cover the area that the high deductible insurance policies do not cover.

Another benefit of an HSA is that the medical treatments that are allowed by the IRS (they have a say since it is a tax-exempt account) cover many alternative healing modalities such as chiropractors, acupuncturist, and psychoanalysts, as well as dental and eye care, which are often excluded from basic health insurance policies.

Employers like the HSA route since it both can save them money – almost 30% over the co-payment insurance route – and gives their employees greater control over their medical care. A side effect of HSA implementation is that once employees take more responsibility for their health maintenance they often start making healthier choices at meal times.

Employees also like the HSA option since all unspent funds remain in the savings account. The account can continue to accrue funds to be available after retirement. Since the HSA belongs to the employee, not the employer, the employee has the discretion to use the account or save up for the medical rainy day.

Since small and medium-size businesses historically have found that health insurance has given them a competitive advantage in hiring the best employees, HSAs give employers a way to help employees beyond the affordable catastrophic coverage. Also when health insurance programs are instituted, employee moral and the businesses profitability usually go up.

To help your company increase sales, turn to the alternative financing and credit card processing specialists at US Business Finance Corp – we find the best credit card processing and alternative financing solutions for small and mid-sized businesses.

Business owners adapting the franchise business model strengths to improve their company’s financial success find business documentation a challenging task. In US Business Finance Corp’s experience assisting small businesses start on a solid business foundation, from arranging sources of operating capital to finding the best merchant credit card processing services,  we evolved a simplified solution to this task. First diagram and document the company culture and second document the money trail from sales to payment.

Training Increases Credit Card Profitability

The foundational training is centered on the company culture, which covers the basics such as dress code, using the time clock, calling when there are changes in schedules, and use of company property. Make sure there are no “unspoken rules” that carry greater weight than the documented rules. Unspoken rules can undermine the success of the best systems.

When training employees, by following the money trail, the employee has a logical structure to frame their new found knowledge. Start with product training, possibly on a graduated basis for more involved products, so they know what the company offers – and what problems the products solve.

The next step in the money trail is sales. Sales training ranges from operational steps such as working the cash register and credit card terminals to the customer service area of handling irate customers, finding the right product for clients to soliciting customer feedback. US Business Finance Corp knows how important it is to protect your merchant status with Visa and MasterCard, so we provide training on all aspects of handling credit card transactions for all our merchant credit card account processing service clients.

Invoicing & Cash Advances Offset Slow Bill Payers

The last steps are usually the back office steps of handling payroll, invoicing and bill collecting. Though maybe somewhat tedious, one place most businesses have room for improvement is timely billing on their outstanding accounts. The sooner invoices are sent, the sooner clients will send their payments and keep the cash flow at the necessary level to meet the business’s own bills. When clients are slow to pay their bills and create cash flow emergencies for business owners, our business cash advance option is a fast safety valve to bring in cash with a pledge against future Visa and MasterCard sales. No personal guarantee or collateral necessary, US Business Finance Corp takes on the risk of the cash advance.

Documentation can be as simple as block diagrams or photographs of steps in the process – as long as the steps are clear. Simplifying steps aids in the ability of employees to remember the processes. An added benefit of simplifying steps is the time to document and maintain the documentation so it remains current to your business’s innovations and improvements is reduced.

US Business Finance Corp realizes the tremendous benefits to consistent training having financial safety valves set up before your business runs into a cash flow emergency. Our team provides training to our merchant credit card account clients and our business cash advance option provides peace of mind for business owners. We believe credit cards and business financing sources should benefit your company with greater income! By helping to minimize “operator error” through training and setting up your business for quickly accessing a cash advance when you need it,  we can help improve your business and protect your profit margins.