The Yorkshire Bank research stated that one problem small businesses owners encounter is the difficulty in having a ‘sounding board’ to discuss ideas and decisions. Even if you don’t have any employees that can offer an opinion, there are a variety of sources of advice that shouldn’t be overlooked. The first place for advice is BusinessLink, which provides a wealth of free guides and information sheets through their website. In addition, you can book appointments with them to receive business advice on all manner of topics, from operational issues to marketing advice. I can’t speak for all of the advisers, however the one I met up with in Newcastle certainly knew what they were talking about, as she had previously run a business with an annual turnover of over £8 million. They’re also available to offer help via email or over the phone if you require. You can find the contact details of your local BusinessLink by visiting their website, www.businesslink.gov.uk.

One of the areas uncovered by the survey of Yorkshire Bank was that small business owners felt that approaching a bank manager for advice wasn’t a realistic option. Yorkshire Bank, however, have been keen to promote their ‘experienced advisors’ that have been trained to understand the specific needs and conditions inherent in small business ownership, and will take a holistic and broad view of both the business and personal finances.

So if you need free advice then why not give Business Link a call, or book an appointment with an adviser at your bank.

Tags: business advice, businesslink, bank manager, small business owner

One of the previous winners, “Money Savvy Generation”, aimed at teaching children the importance of money. Their first product was a ‘Money Savvy Pig’, and now they offer educational material for elementary school students.

You’ve still got until September 2007 to get your entry in so why not give it a go?!

Unfortunately the competition is only open to small businesses who are located in the US, Canada, Singapore, China, the Philippines and Mexico. Shame it’s not open to UK businesses as well! Your business must also have a 2006 turnover of between $250,000 and $10m in order to qualify for entry.

See the UPS website for more details..

Tags: small business contest, win cash, innovative, small businesses, ups, ibm

Paypal offers a slightly alternative service as by definition it is an Online Payments Bureau, meaning that you don’t need to have an IMA as they process the card details for you, using their own acquiring services. Consequently Paypal, which is now called “Paypal Merchant Services” is perfect for SMEs wishing to trade online, as it has low (usually non-existent)  setup fees. This article reviews the pros and cons of the Paypal services for merchants.

In my opinion the most useful features of Paypal’s merchant services are Website Payments Pro and its Virtual Terminal – the combination of the two should satisfy a SMEs online card processing needs. An overview of the two services is given below:

1. Website Payments Pro - Once you’ve applied and been accepted into the Website Payments Pro scheme, not only can you accept credit / debit card payments through Paypal, you can also accept them on your site. This avoids the issue of having to redirect visitors away from your website, which can boost order completion rates. Paypal have released official payment modules for hundreds of shopping cart systems, such as osCommerce, Agora etc.. In my experience of intergrating the official osCommerce Paypal module, it was quite a simple procedure if you use a good file comparison tool like WinMerge. Customers simply go through the order process on your website, and then enter their payment details on your website, rather than going through to the Paypal website. An internet merchant account is provided as part of the package, so there’s no need to get one of these from a merchant bank. In addition to being able to accept payment details through your own website, access to their ‘Virtual Terminal’ is included – allowing you to take telephone, fax or mail orders and process the details in real-time online.Current Price: Free Until 1st July 2007 – then £20pm thereafter.
   Transaction Fees: Range from 1.9% to 3.4% dependent on monthly volume and each transaction incurs a flat charge £0.20.
2. Virtual Terminal - As I mentioned above, this is a great and powerful application, enabling any business to take payment details and process them through an online interface. You don’t need a PDQ to swipe the card – you can accept card details either over the phone or with a fax. In addition to accepting sales, you can also ‘authorize’ card details – which basically means that you enter the customer’s card details, and their card is authorized for the purchase amount to make sure they have sufficient funds, and then when you’re ready to complete the sale you can ‘capture’ the funds. An example of this use would be if you only take payment upon despatch of goods – you could authorise the card details and amount upon the customer placing the order, and then capture the funds when you dispatch the goods.

Benefits of Paypal

• No internet merchant account required – as mentioned before this can represent a significant cost saving, with some merchant accounts costing up to £250.
• Accept credit card payments directly on your own SSL enabled ecommerce store, rather than the customer having to be transferred to the payment processor’s website.
• Virtual Terminal allows telephone orders to be taken.
• Quick application review – approximately 2 weeks when I applied.
• Secure – if you are accepting credit card payments on your website, you will need to make sure that you have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate for your business, or have access to a shared certificate through your own web hosting company. Payment details are then transferred securely behind-the-scenes to Paypal.
• Supports a huge variety of shopping cart systems.
• Offers integration support for their shopping cart payment modules.
• Currently no monthly fees!
• Quite low transaction fees, which decrease even further if you have a high monthly turnover.
• Telephone support – Paypal has had quite a bit of bad press regarding its support; some people say they can never get a helpful answer from their customer service. Generally I find that it can take quite a while (up to 5 days) to get an email response to a query, but if it’s urgent you can always phone them up. Whenever I’ve called their customer service department their agents have always been helpful and have sorted the problem out immediately, or followed up anything which needed attention. If you experience a real technical issue they transfer you to a tech rep, who helps you diagnose the problem and helps to get the problem resolved.

Disadvantages of Using Paypal

• If you run an offline business and have a PDQ terminal you will already have an Internet Merchant Account to use, and so other solutions may be more cost efficient.
• Sometimes debit card / Switch transactions have trouble going through – albeit quite rare.
• Slow email customer support – but as mentioned above their telephone support is fine.
• Low turnover businesses face higher transaction costs, although these are still lower than if you add up the potential costs that your Merchant Bank and other Payment Processors would charge.

In my experience features such as Website Payments Pro and the Virtual Terminal are a great tool for both ecommerce store owners looking to accept card payments online, and for small businesses who want to accept card details either over the phone or fax. I have experienced very few problems with their service and any issues I have encountered have been looked into and sorted out quite quickly. In summary, I would highly recommend that SMEs consider Paypal as their payment processor.

Tags: website payments pro, virtual terminal, payment processor, internet merchant account, small businesses, sme, review of paypal, review

Transaction fees with Internet Merchant Accounts depend on the type and scale of your business – when reviewing the account, you can negotiate with the bank to try and lower these fees, as they aren’t set in stone. There are a variety of IMA banks in the UK, these are the big five:

• Barclays
• Natwest Streamline
• Bank of Scotland
• HSBC  
• Lloyds TSB

In my opinion Natwest and Barclays are two of the best providers for internet merchant accounts, both are easy and professional to deal with, and offer good value IMA services. If you are in the UK and haven’t yet got an IMA then you would be well-advised to become a member of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) – at a cost of just £100 this provides you with a lot of benefits which are detailed on their website.

Once you are a member of the FSB, you qualify with a reduction in internet merchant account application fees from Natwest from £250 to absolutely nothing. If you weren’t already a FSB member, then at worst case the merchant account has cost you £100, but if you are already a member of the FSB then it won’t cost you a penny. Additionally, they will reduce the transaction fees for you as a result of being an FSB member. Natwest’s contact number is 0800 010 166.

Okay, now what? Once you’ve got an internet merchant account you’re going to need a payment processor, such as Worldpay, Authorize.net and SecureHosting – these are the people that actually process the card details, whilst the IMA is where the funds are deposited. Generally SecureHosting is one of the best value payment processors around and should certainly be in your shortlist.

Tags: free internet merchant account, application fee, natwest