The Paperwork Nobody Reads
The processing statement arrives every month, and most owners do the same thing with it. It gets filed. It goes into a drawer, or into a folder in an email account nobody opens, and it sits there until the next one arrives. That is not laziness. A statement is dense, it is written in language that was never meant to be read by somebody running a business, and on the week it lands there is usually something more urgent to do.
But the statement is not really paperwork. It is the record of what your business actually paid, and it is the only place that record exists. Everything else — what you were quoted, what you were told on a call, what a summary line claims — is a description of the cost. The statement is the cost.
It is also the document that makes a real conversation possible. If you are switching processors, one recent statement is all we need to start, and we go through it with you line by line, in plain language and in writing, so you know what each charge on it is for rather than what a summary line says it is.
The Lines Worth Finding
You do not have to be an accountant to read your own statement. You need to find a handful of things on it, and know which of them are worth asking about. Here is what to look for.
- The rate you are actually being charged. It is the number every other line is measured against, and it is not always the number you remember being quoted.
- The fees that sit outside that rate. The rate on the front is rarely the whole of what you paid — the rest is usually in the smaller lines further down.
- Any monthly or statement fees. These arrive whether you had a busy month or a quiet one, and they are easy to stop noticing.
- Any minimum or batch charges. These have a habit of turning up on a slow month, which is the month you can least afford a surprise.
- The equipment and terminal costs. Worth knowing what the hardware on your counter is costing you, and whether you are still paying for it.
- Any fee whose wording does not make clear what it is for. If you cannot tell what a line is charging you for, that is worth finding out before you agree to anything else.
None of those means anything on its own, and none of them is a trick. The point is to see them, on your own statement, in your own numbers — because a cost you can see is a cost you can do something about.
Questions To Ask About Your Own Statement
Once you have found those lines, there are four questions worth asking about your own statement. Ask them of whoever you process with now, and ask them of anybody you are considering.
- What is this fee for?
- Is it charged once, or every month?
- What does it cost me if I want to leave?
- What is my total cost over a year, not just the headline rate?
We can help you understand what you are looking at, and we will tell you plainly what each line means. But anything that turns on your own agreement — what it commits you to, what it says about ending it, and what your own paperwork requires — is a question for the provider you are with and for your own adviser. That is not us, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Why We Ask For One Statement
When an owner gets in touch about switching, we ask for one recent statement. Not a year of them, not the folder from the back of a drawer, and not a summary written out by hand. The most recent one, on its own.
The first reason is that it tells us what the business is actually paying now. A statement from two years ago describes a business that has changed since — different volume, a different mix of cards, a different counter — so it is a poor basis for a decision about today.
The second reason is that it lets us go through it with you. We sit down with the one page and work down it in plain language, so you finish the conversation knowing what you are paying for. That is why a switch can start from a single page rather than from a box of paperwork. One statement, and a conversation about what is on it.
What A Cleaner Arrangement Looks Like
Since the subject is statements, it is only fair to say what ours tends to look like, in our own terms and without dressing it up. There is no contract and there are no termination fees, so leaving does not carry a penalty and there is no term running quietly in the background. The equipment is zero cost with a business account, and if you already have a terminal or other equipment in place, we swap it out for ours at no cost to you. With Cash Discount, your card processing fees come to 0% instead of a percentage of every sale. And a restaurant gets 3 months free marketing alongside it.
That is the whole of it, with nothing underneath those four things. It is not a promise that a statement becomes interesting reading. It is simply the arrangement we would rather an owner compare against whatever they are holding now.
Where To Start
If you have a recent statement to hand, that is the whole starting point. Call us on (916) 918-7017, or send your details through the form on this site, and we will go through it with you line by line. Tell us what your business uses today and what you would like to change.
Our offer is the same three things it always is: zero cost equipment, 0% fees with Cash Discount, and 3 months free marketing. If the honest answer is that what you already have is working for you, we will tell you that instead. There is no obligation to go further, and no pressure either way.
The takeaway
Your processing statement is the record of what your business actually paid, and the lines worth finding are the ones outside the headline rate. Read it, ask what each fee is for, and ask what it costs you over a year rather than what the rate looks like. Send us one recent statement and we will go through it with you line by line.
Read more about this on our Card Processing page.
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