CrossCheck Blog

Today I heard another comment about the future of automotive retailing from someone who is not in the industry, but considers themselves fully qualified to predict the future. Predicting is a tricky business, particularly about the future. In this case, his prediction was that new car dealers would go away, and be replaced by “test drive centers” where you can take a test drive after doing all your research online.

Furniture retailers across the U.S. will gather for the bounty of education that is the Furniture First Symposium. The event offers a forum for retailers to grow their knowledge by learning marketing and merchandising tactics from others in the industry. The Furniture First Symposium is slated for May 13 – 15 in San Diego, Calif. at the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel. This is a great opportunity to socialize with other owners and learn new business strategies.

Check verification services provide merchants with recommendations on whether or not they should accept the checks they receive as payment. Check verification services are used to decrease the likelihood of returned checks. It’s an important merchant service because it is impossible to confirm whether or not checkwriters have sufficient funds to cover checks drawn on their accounts.

Thinking of starting a car dealership? You’ll be in good company and want to launch the venture with the help of an auto dealer management system. This two-part series will explore the challenges and intricacies of being a new car dealership and why one would need a reliable and robust dealer management system (DMS). We begin with a description of the retail automotive space and related statistics.

Check processing machines? Yes, we have them. More importantly, though, what does CrossCheck do with them? Like the old adage about tools only being as good as the craftsmen who use them, CrossCheck leverages check processing machines to help merchants increase sales and mitigate risk while saving time and money. Check processing machines became a necessity after Congress passed the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21) in 2003 and it went into effect the following year. The vulnerabilities of the old system — including the overnight exchange of checks between financial institutions — became apparent in the days following Sep. 11, 2001 when all non-military aircraft were grounded for security reasons. As a result, Check 21 allows banks to process checks electronically, making for a more efficient and sustainable check-clearing system.

There has been a lot of interest in merchant cash discounting and surcharging recently, and people seem to be confused about what is permissible and what is not. This brief overview begins with examples showing how cash discounting, surcharging and convenience fees affect merchants as well as consumers. A consumer drives into a gas station and there is a sign showing two prices: one for cash and one for credit. When they use a credit card, they pay the higher price. This is cash discounting. A consumer goes to a local merchant and there is a sign saying if they pay with a credit card, they will be charged an extra fee equal to what the merchant pays to have the transaction processed as a credit card sale. That is surcharging.

One of the most famous books on running small businesses is called The E-Myth, which was written 30 years ago by Michael Gerber. He used to have an office just down the street from us here in Petaluma, but he has since moved to sunnier climes. The book sold 150,000 copies when it came out and Gerber was featured on many television talk shows. His successor book, The E-Myth Revisited, is one of the five top-selling business books of all time. It has been translated into 27 languages and is required reading in some MBA programs. In a nutshell, Gerber says it’s a myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs, and also have tangible business skills.

A consumer just found their dream car and believe they got a good deal from one of the local auto dealerships. Isn’t this one of the big things in life? Of course it is. Being a savvy shopper, this consumer knows the car depreciated 10 percent the instant they drove it off the car lot and that it will depreciate another 10 percent over the first year of ownership. They may also be aware that studies show it will lose about 10 percent of its value each year over the next four years. If one does the math, this means that after five years, it is going to be worth about half or even 40 percent of the original sale price. Many people, including me, find this to be a scary statistic.

TRANSACT 2019 is where professionals working in electronic payments want to be. ETA, the leading organization in electronic payments, presents its annual conference April 30 to May 2 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. The event features three-plus days of seminar sessions, keynote presentations by leaders in payments technology, an exhibit hall, and networking events such as business luncheons and dinners, galas and awards presentations, and a golf tournament.

In our previous blog, we listed ways for consumers to leverage preparation as a means of speeding up the sales process at auto dealerships. As the old Boy Scout motto says, “Be Prepared!” This second article in the two-part series discusses how to accelerate the process once consumers arrive at dealerships. The discussion begins with a brief explanation of dealership interests.