Posted by Chad Gardner

With over 25 million small businesses , all in a wide range of industries, all needing a variety of products and services–and most willing to invest to improve right now–it’s important to take a look at how advances in technology have brought down the cost of implementing services like recurring billing and electronic invoicing for your customers, and how this can help your niche.

Recently, we’ve had an influx of customers from membership and contract-based businesses, like health clubs and gyms. So I wanted to share information we have learned from our day-to-day operations about how online payment processing helps this niche.

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Popularity: 100% [?]

Posted by Chad Gardner

I wish I could remember which blog I first found out about Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty so I could give the author recognition, but there are 8,000+ blogs of all different subjects–from small business to personal to technology–registered to speak out about poverty today, and each and every one deserves acknowledgment for addressing such an important worldwide issue. This is truly an extraordinary opportunity requiring minimum effort to combine thousands of individual voices and opinions in to ONE, unwavering message.

Taking the idea that the sum is greater than the parts, I wanted to profile one of my favorite non-partisan organizations, The ONE Campaign, to show how anyone can get involved by contributing only their voice to help eradicate global hunger and poverty.

I had a chance to send some questions to a good friend of mine, Libby Crimmings, who is the Regional Field Director for the Iowa and Minnesota ONE Campaign.  I wanted to get a better feel for what this campaign is all about, including getting a grasp for the current worldwide situation and how even the smallest actions can create remarkable synergy.

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Popularity: 19% [?]

Posted by Chris Kampfe

In our pursuit to unite business policies with green policies, we’re going beyond simply using public transit, biking to work, and recycling our green tea bottles…which we do anyway. One of our foremost aspirations at PaySimple is to simplify billing processes and empower small businesses to succeed. Taking that a step further, when small businesses and online billing come together, we’re succeeding not only in the marketplace, but also in reducing our impact on the environment.

Small businesses across the country spend thousands of dollars every day on paper, printing and postage to bill clients. By moving all your invoices and receipts into the magnificent, paperless world of the Internet, you are effectively tossing all of those expenses in the compost pile, or recycle bin–or whatever you do with your trash.

In the process of saving your business money, you’ll also be saving trees, water and energy. Think of paperless billing as your company’s way of thinking globally and acting locally.

If you’re wondering just what kind of impact you and your business can have, below is a posting from ElectronicPayments.org, which estimates the environmental upshot if every household in the U.S. paid their bills online.

• Save 18.5 million trees each year, or the amount of lumber needed for 216,054 typical single-family homes.

• Save more than 15.8 billion gallons of wastewater a year, more than that generated by the city of Fresno, Calif.

• Save more than 29 trillion BTUs, more than enough energy to provide residential power to the city of Jacksonville, Fla. for one year.

• Reduce toxic air pollutants by 2.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalents, akin to having 390,326 fewer cars.

• Reduce by 1.7 billion pounds the solid waste generated in a year, equal to the raw tonnage generated by Detroit in a year’s time.

• Save landfill space and curb the amount of toxic chemicals - including methane gas - released into the atmosphere as paper decomposes. A contributor to global warming, methane gas has 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon monoxide.

Many small businesses are created on a foundation of integrity, but due to budgetary restraints, decisions are often made on a basis of what is “financially sound,” and not necessarily what is “environmentally sound.”

By creating platforms for small businesses to shine, we hope to change the way businesses think, to show that financially and environmentally sound choices are in fact one and the same… and that tofu is nutritious and can actually be quite tasty when prepared with the right seasonings.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Technorati Tags: recycling, small business, online billing, paperless billing, environmentally sound, tofu

Posted by Sarah Jordan

As most of us are smack in the middle of our first full workweek after the holidays—and we’re re-energized and back in the swing of things—I’d like to take a moment to recap some important industry events of last year. Here are a few of the milestones, scares, and trendsetters from 2007:

o Studies revealed that consumers initiated $82.3 billion electronic transactions 2006, an increase of 13% from the year before.*

o The fall of the paper check continued: the Federal Reserve announced its plan to cut its regional check-processing centers down to four by March 2011.

o Payment networks Visa, MasterCard, and Discover became stand-alone public entities or were in the final stages of becoming so.

o Visa launched its mobile payments platform.

o Apple released the iPhone, and its tremendous popularity contributed to the predictions of mobile payments expansion.

o “Skimming,” a process where someone takes your credit card to process your payment and then fraudulently records your information for later use, became a notorious id theft practice.

o Security breaches drove more proactive PCI compliance programs, both externally by law and from within companies.

What to expect for our new year? Security threats and compliance programs will continue to gain momentum and hopefully mandate all payments industry organizations become PCI compliant. Paper checks will continue to decline and actually become more costly and time-intensive to process manually. Technology innovations, partnerships, and mergers will not only integrate payment, accounting, and billing systems, but also inventory, shipping, and distribution systems. Happy New Year to a more secure and efficient business.

*Figure from Digital Transactions (v4, n11, November 2007)

Popularity: 14% [?]

Technorati Tags: electronic transactions, paper check, mobile payments, id theft, PCI compliant

Posted by Sarah Jordan

The holiday season can either be your busiest or your slowest time of the year. Help prepare for this season by following these simple tips:

Watch Your Cash Flow: If the holidays are the busiest time for your business, then save money from your increased revenue for the slower months ahead. However, if the holidays are the slowest time for your business, then cut your expenses as much as you can and start a reserve when revenue is flowing again for next holiday season.
Sell Gift Certificates and Gift Cards: Almost every business, from dentists to carpet cleaning, can sell gift cards during the holiday season for their services. If the holidays are slow for you, then offer gift cards/certificates at a discount, allowing you to take advantage of holiday buying revenue, and the customer to use later in the year.
Take Advantage of “Down” Time: Host a networking party, update your website, submit an article to a local publication. Every business has its “down” time and it’s a great time to get caught up on tasks that get pushed to the back burner during the busy months.
Attend Holiday Parties: Holiday parties are an excellent way to make new contacts and reach potential clients. Attend as many parties as you can–and don’t forget to bring along a handful of business cards.
Send Holiday Cards and Thank You’s: An important part of the holidays for all of us is to send thanks and well wishes to others. This is also important for businesses. Sending a holiday card with “Thanks for being our customer” is a very simple and inexpensive way to remind customers of your business.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Technorati Tags: holiday season, Cash Flow, networking party

Posted by Sarah Jordan

Yep, it’s true. It seems everything under the sun these days is “going green” (even Wal-Mart has). While PaySimple itself promotes saving resources and going paperless for billing and collections, we’ve recently taken simple internal steps to be more environmentally friendly as well.

1) We’ve implemented glass, paper, and plastic recycling bins throughout the office. And if we don’t separate accordingly, our office manager will be sure to let us know. We also recycle our print cartridges, which in turn, makes them more inexpensive to purchase.

2) Our new web server, Dreamhost, is green. This may sound odd, but servers that host green put off significantly less harmful emissions and use renewable energy. Click the logo to see our green certification or Learn more about Dreamhost.

3) In addition, PaySimple is using EcoPasses. An EcoPass with the Regional Transportation District in Denver gives employees all-inclusive access to local public transportation methods. Within one month, an entire office went from driving to work, to taking public transit.

Taking small steps to becoming green is not difficult and can save your business some cash in the process. Check out public transportation programs in your area and start recycling your print cartridges. If you’re shopping for web hosting options, choose one with a clean emissions program. And as always, your business can get some good PR out of it.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Technorati Tags: going green, environmentally friendly, recycling, EcoPass, web hosting