Quicker Online Store Cash Flow And A QuickBooks Accounting Hack

attractive woman holding credit card out in front of notebook computer

I thought some history of credit card processing would be a good base to build this post upon.

Going back as far as 9000 BC one could use cattle, camels and fish as currency.

You had to spend the fish fast.

Cowrie shells, gold and silver nuggets leading to Chinese deerskin notes and Native American wampum beads.

The Manhatten Wampum bead myth

“In the Dutch National Archives is the only known primary reference to the Manhattan sale: a letter written by Dutch merchant Pieter Schage on November 5, 1626, to directors of the West India Company, which was instrumental in the exploration and settlement of “New Netherland.” In the letter, he writes, “They have purchased the Island of Manhattes from the savages for the value of 60 guilders.” (There is a surviving deed for Manhattan and Long Island, but this was made well after this initial Manhattan purchase, when the Dutch had already been inhabiting the island for several decades.) 

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As far back as 5000 years ago Mesopotamians used clay tablets but found them to be impractical for their wallets and purses.

Melting down tons of copper was not a much better option as you needed a horse and cart full of copper to go shopping at the renaissance mall.

In the 19th century, merchants would use “credit coins” and “charge plates” to extend credit for local farmers and ranchers, providing credit until their crops and livestock were sold.

Growing up in the 20th century long before Internet, payments were primarily made in cash or with a paper check.

In1946 guy by the name of John Biggins, a banker created the”Charge-it” card.

Purchases were forwarded to Mr. Biggins bank who reimbursed the merchant and chased the customers for payments.

This was coined the “closed loop system.”

Five years later, New York’s Franklin National Bank issued its first charge card.

Charge cards like the Diners Club card and American Express emerged but banks found a gravy train with consumer cards providing revolving credit with Bank of America leading the charge <-pun, in 1958.

Franklin’s marketing plan was to mail out thousands of cards arbitrarily to folks in California.

In 1966 MasterCard was born out of a group of banks forming the Inter-Bank card Association (ITC)

Bringing us to “now,” the buffet of payment processing choices is large enough for a kings celebration.

  • Credit Cards
  • Mobile Payments
  • Bank Transfers
  • Ewallets
  • Prepaid Cards
  • Direct Deposit
  • Cash

Cities are trying to ban cashless businesses 

Good luck with that.

What’s even more remarkable is the exponential explosion of companies and methods for processing money online.

Here are a few that I found, I’m sure there are more

Due
Stripe
Dwolla
Apple Pay
Payoneer
2Checkout
Amazon Payments
Square
Payza
Skrill
PayPal (237 million people have active PayPal accounts)
Braintree
Venmo
Visa checkout (20 million active customer accounts worldwide)
Google wallet
Masterpass
ACH (a U.S.-specific payment method) increased by more than 1 billion in 2017 for the third year in a row)
Ali Pay (China)
WebMoney
iDeal (the Netherlands)
Giropay (Germany)
Sofort (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain)
eNets (Singapore)
Boleto Bancaio (Brazil)
Paysafe
SEPA Direct Debit (500 million Europeans)

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Begin Quicker Online Store Cash Flow And A QuickBooks Accounting Hack

Every article you’ll read and all the questions you  see on LinkedIn about merchant processors sound like:

“What’s the best merchant processing rate I can find?”

“What are all those fees and will they keep me PCI DSS compliant?”

Editor’s note – We currently use PayPal exclusively online for credit card processing (and PayPal Express) which does not require PCI DSS compliance.

Continue reading “Quicker Online Store Cash Flow And A QuickBooks Accounting Hack”

Why Paypal Working Capital Should Be An SMBs Go To Lender

black and gold PayPal logos

Full transparency, my only relationship with PayPal is as a customer.

PayPal Working Capital was formerly Bill Me Later.

We’ve been using PayPal for 14 years and currently have three active accounts we use for selling online. 

Square is used for walk-in retail sales so we are able to separate Indiana cash and credit card sales for sales tax filing purposes.

Ironically 10% of all our online customers live in Illinois and now get a 10.25% discount from us as we are no longer collecting and paying sales tax in that state.

Continue reading “Why Paypal Working Capital Should Be An SMBs Go To Lender”

Easy Hack For Getting Your Finances Under Control $20 At A Time

caliper measurement holding coins on top of financial journal with calculator on foreground

I wrote the following post in 2013 but never published it.

Six years later we are under the same precept.

Recently, we took it up farther than we ever should.

We moved our home and Windy City Parrot operations from the geographical center of Chicago to Lowell, Indiana a town of about 10,000 people surrounded by corn farms.

There’s only 5 stops light from one end of the main street (which we are on) to another.

We now have one lease instead of 2 and 4 fewer utility bills while eliminating 2 buildings to maintain.

Our State Farm vehicle insurance and business insurance dropped 50%.

Continue reading “Easy Hack For Getting Your Finances Under Control $20 At A Time”

Why You Don’t Know Jack About WordPress Migrations

Computer specialist working in a bright office

We are migrating our WordPress blog to a new host.

We will add the Woocommerce plugin and then migrate all the data from our current zen cart ecommerce store to the new woocommerce store

 

my short list is

 

https://getflywheel.com/pricing/

https://pressable.com/pricing/

https://www.greengeeks.com

https://www.dreamhost.com/website-builder

https://www.a2hosting.com/solutions

https://www.inmotionhosting.com/wordpress-hosting-promo?

https://www.siteground.com/speed

 

I didn’t see pricing on hyve.com

 

I may go with 2 hosts because we have 4 

‘hobby” sites that are really small but our current site gets 100,000 page views/mo and I like dedicated servers.

 

Flywheel is cool (I thought) because you can build your dev site on your desktop for free and when you’re ready to go live you can just push it to their servers  – no muss no fuss,

 

They also have something called “Blueprint” which maps out any number plug-ins that you use on a regular basis.

 

They (the plug-ins) can be added to any new site with a single click

 

Stay tuned

 

I’m old enough to have a Medicare card

 

Yet I Lord also over a dozen websites on three hosting platforms.

 

I make my living in have done so from e-commerce for 15 years.

 

Have 400,000 social media followers because of my expertise in captive bird husbandry.

 

I still have a thirst to learn something new every day.

 

My day gig is WindyCityParrot.com, which has been around since New Year’s Eve 2002 when my wife Catherine launched it.

 

Since then I’ve built dozens, maybe a hundred or more websites.

 

You get the picture. I know e-commerce.

 

3 WordPress hosts – reviewed 

For a convoluted set of reasons, our current eCommerce platform is a hybrid WordPress/Zen Cart.

 

This combination is not working on a number of levels especially for SEO.

 

There are many reasons for it but I’ve suspected several which I’ve recently confirmed.

Continue reading “Why You Don’t Know Jack About WordPress Migrations”

Why are banks and insurance companies ignoring the eCommerce market?

Isolated dinosaur and monster model in white (dinosaur, rex, tyrannosaurus)

To my insurance agent

Could you send us something that explicitly states we are covered against legal action if a customer’s pet bird gets sick or dies and we are the target.

The customer will have paid us via credit card, PayPal &/or Apple Pay also – we need insulation against future forms of electronic payments – thank you

Continue reading “Why are banks and insurance companies ignoring the eCommerce market?”