Protecting Practice Finances

The following article was published in the Atlanta Hospital News in August, 2009 By Jeffry Finkel My last column answered reader questions about saving money on directory assistance calls, postage machines, office equipment leases, and shipping.   If you missed the column, be sure to check last month’s Atlanta Hospital News or read it on my website at www.OverheadReductionServices.com.    This month’s column offers money saving tips on document storage and credit card processing, and ways to protect your practice from financial scams. Merchant Processing:  VISA, MasterCard (MC), and Discover use processing companies to process charges billed to their debit and credit cards.   You may know your merchant processing company as Wholesale Merchant Group, First Data, Global, COSTCO, Elavon, or SunTrust Bank” or by any of hundreds of names.   VISA, MC, and Discover charge these processors fees for allowing them to process their debit and credit card transactions.  The processors, in turn, make money by marking up those fees; markups vary dramatically among processors.  Processors also assess charges for paper statements, equipment maintenance, account activation, and transaction fees, among others.    VISA and MC just increased rates to their processors on October 15th.   While some processors passed through this increase without adding a markup, others added only moderate markups, while some added steep markups, thus dramatically increasing practice costs.  All businesses deserve to earn a profit; however, your practice should not pay usurious fees.   Negotiate with your processor to reduce fees.  Or call me for help negotiating with your current processor or switching you to a processor who charges reasonable rates, eliminates activation and reprogramming fees, provides next-day funding, eliminates contracts, and passed through this latest rate increase without adding a markup. Storage:  Do you presently contract for or are you considering off-site storage for records and other documents?  Think carefully.   You may be surprised to learn how expensive this can be.  While the cost for storing documents may be small, the cost of retrieving and destroying (shredding) the documents once they are no longer needed can be enormously expensive.   Take the case of a practice that was paying only a few hundred dollars a month for storage.  When the documents were no longer needed, it found that the cost of removing the contents from storage and destroying them was thousands of dollars.   Before you decide to contract for off-site storage, carefully consider whether you really need to retain the documents and whether storing them on-site would be less expensive and more convenient.  And, read the contract carefully before signing it! Scams:  Has your practice ever been scammed?   Has an employee answered a phone call from someone posing as your office equipment vendor, and then revealed the brand and model number of your office copier, thus giving the thief the information necessary either to send unsolicited printer cartridges or – even worse – to send invoices for unshipped cartridges?  Have you found odd charges on your phone bill for services never requested (e.g., online yellow page advertising)?   Perhaps the practice cashed or deposited a small check…say $3.95…that automatically enrolled the practice in an unnecessary $39.95 monthly online directory service.  Has your credit card bill listed charges for services and items never ordered?   Has an employee responded to an email request purportedly from the practice’s bank asking for verification of account information only to learn later that he provided confidential information to a crook by responding to a “phishing” email (a fake email that appears to be sent by a reputable company)?   If any of these scenarios resonate with you, you may have been scammed.   One of my clients recently avoided being robbed in a scam involving Craig’s list and PayPal.  The business listed equipment for sale.  A “buyer” contacted the practice, agreed to the asking price, and stated that she would pay via PayPal.  She included a link to the PayPal website so the business could enroll in PayPal were it not already enrolled.  My client suspected fraud after observing that the “buyer” used two different email addresses and two different first names in her correspondence.  She contacted PayPal and found that it had no record of either the “buyer” or her email addresses.   Had the business clicked the “PayPal link” in the “buyer’s” email, it would have revealed confidential financial information to the perpetrator. More than ever, it is essential for practice personnel to be vigilant about protecting the practice’s financial assets.  Access www.OverheadReductionServices.com for more money-saving tips.  Jeffry Finkel is the President and owner of Overhead Reduction Services.  He may be reached at (404) 995-9112, (877) 990-8746, or via email at Jeff@OverheadReductionServices.com.