CrossCheck Blog

Owning a car is expensive. The American Automobile Association (AAA) says it costs about $8,469 if you drive an average of 15,000 miles a year. But Nerdwallet gets more granular and they calculate a typical monthly cost as follows:

Every construction project requires you to spend money on labor and materials. One way to generate higher business profits is by lowering the cost of building materials. It is possible to save money while buying building materials — you just need to know the right tactics to reduce overhead expenses.

Let’s look at six ways to do that.

Article Summary

1. Buying Building Materials in Bulk or at Wholesale
2. Buy Easy-to-Install Building Materials
3. Choose Prefabricated or Modular Materials
4. Have a Network of Suppliers
5. Negotiate Free Delivery
6. Establish Good Payment Terms

The Summer Las Vegas Market (LVM) was an amazing destination for furniture dealers and interior designers. Furniture, home gifts, educational events, and great people were all part of this year’s semiannual market. LVM reported strong order writing and increased showroom traffic. Summer LVM was held July 28 – August 1.

The Las Vegas Market is the go-to furniture retailer destination where they present more than 4,300 furniture, home decor and gift outlets — more than 130 of which were new to the campus this year. Located in Nevada’s jewel city, LVM is a great place to buy furniture, learn about the industry, and have a fun filled experience.

Consumers think that selling new vehicles is the most important and profitable part of running a new car franchise, and that dealers make a lot of money on each unit sold. Yes it is important, but there is another part of the business that really pays the bills and keeps the lights on: the parts and service operation. This now comprises 49% of a dealership’s gross profit, up from 45% in 2012. You will hear this referred to as “fixed ops.” That’s a strange term; what does it mean?

Car dealers have historically called one part of the business variable and one part fixed.

A current study by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) found that there is a serious shortage of car mechanics at dealerships, somewhere around 20,000 – 25,000 people. The trade group predicts that dealers will need another 46,000 more people by 2026. If you own or manage a dealership, this will keep you up at night, because today the parts and service area (aka “fixed ops”) comprises fully 49% of the dealership’s gross profit. It’s what keeps the lights on and pays the bills!

CrossCheck started in the check guarantee business way back in 1983. Checks ruled at the time, and nearly every merchant accepted them at the point of sale. Back then, in fact, many merchants did not take credit cards at all. This was due, in part, to the high cost of interchange and because processing a card transaction was much more complicated than taking a check.

Merchants had to put a bulky multi-part carbon form in a knuckle-busting sliding imprinter (aka “Zip Zap machine”), and then sort out the forms and send them out for processing. There is a reason why it was called a “knuckle buster.” By comparison, taking a check was pretty easy, comfortable, and familiar to merchants, and consumers commonly wrote them for purchases at the store.

The 2019 Summer Las Vegas Market is a great place for home furnishings dealers to learn about the latest furniture trends of the upcoming season. Discovering what is popular will provide insight when determining the right items to stock and ultimately attract more customers. This year’s summer LVM offers many opportunities and resources to learn about the current industry and acquire amazing furniture for your inventory.

When merchants sell something, they expect to get paid in full right away in order to generate more revenue. They don’t expect to have the payment fail for one reason or another, and never get the money. This seems pretty obvious, but every payment system has failure points, except perhaps the Federal Reserve Wire Transfer system (and even this is not immune from fraud).

In this short piece, we will explore the concept of check guarantee, and how check guarantee providers manage their business to meet predictable targets for payment failure, salvage, and write-offs. Not every business is a candidate for check guarantee, but for those that are, such as car dealers and building supply companies, they can’t live without it!

Here at CrossCheck, I am fortunate to attend a variety of payments industry events, such as the CardNotPresent Expo (CNP) last month, and two previous conferences by the Information Security Media Group, the world’s largest media organization devoted solely to information security and risk management. Seminar sessions are offered at most of these events, and the informational sharing is invaluable.

I thought I had a good understanding of the perils involved in accepting payments, but I was very surprised to learn at the CNP Expo that fraud is now increasing auto dealership risk. If your dealership has not experienced a recent uptick in consumer fraud, you are about to, so you might want to read this.

If you are a merchant, there cannot be too many things that are more aggravating than getting a notice from your bank that you are not going to get paid because a customer put a stop payment on a check written to you.

Your first reaction would probably be surprise, then disappointment, and then anger. “How could they do this to me? … I gave them a good product at a good price and I provided good customer service too.”

As detailed below, there are legitimate reasons for requesting stop payments. On the other hand, writing a check and then stopping payment to avoid getting charged can be considered check fraud, which is a crime actionable at law. Before we get into all that, let’s look at how a merchant-customer relationship is supposed to work.