What You’ll Achieve: A Week-by-Week Cash Flow Forecast Built on Your Own Transaction Data By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a working payout hold forecast: a spreadsheet model that maps your payout holds against your actual transaction patterns. This model will let you forecast your real available cash on a weekly basis, not […]
Category: BAMS Blog
Featured Article Payout Holds: How to Forecast Your Real Cash Flow
Guide Orientation: What This Guide Covers and Who It’s For This guide walks you through ensuring PCI compliance across integrated payment systems, with a specific focus on how payment stack integration affects cash flow, settlement speed and operational costs for service-based businesses handling high-ticket transactions. If you operate a funeral home (or a similar service […]
Guide Orientation: What This Covers and Who It’s For This guide walks you through merchant account setup and secure payment integration for funeral service businesses, with a specific focus on PCI compliance in integrated payment systems. We wrote it for family-owned funeral home operators managing one to ten locations who process high-ticket transactions (often exceeding […]
This guide addresses a specific operational problem: how to implement surcharging or dual pricing on funeral transactions without violating FTC Funeral Rule disclosure requirements or card network rules. Surcharge compliance and dual pricing funeral services sit at the intersection of two regulatory frameworks that most operators treat separately, creating compounding risk. This guide is for […]
A gift card represents a payment before it becomes a present. Customers exchange real money for stored value and rely on the seller to deliver that value accurately and promptly. Since 2006, BAMS has processed payments for eCommerce businesses and managed gift and loyalty programs for our merchants. We assess gift card platforms as we […]
How dispute-driven reserve holds disrupt deposit timing and what eCommerce operators can do to protect purchasing cycles Learn how chargebacks trigger rolling reserve holds that quietly compress your usable cash flow. This guide shows eCommerce managers how to build system-level defenses that keep deposit timing predictable enough to support inventory reorder cycles. TL;DR Chargebacks are […]
Generic merchant services weren’t built for five-figure invoices, insurance assignments, and weeks-long funding gaps Learn why off-the-shelf payment platforms create hidden cash flow problems for funeral homes. This piece frames the real dollar cost of misaligned processing in working capital terms, not feature comparisons. TL;DR Generic payment processors cost you more than fees – The […]
Replace manual collection calls with scheduled, empathetic payment reminders that protect relationships and revenue Learn how to build an automated reminder workflow for outstanding balances in high-sensitivity settings like funeral services. This step-by-step tutorial helps you eliminate manual collection calls, reduce aged receivables, and relieve staff of emotionally draining follow-up. TL;DR Automate the uncomfortable task […]
A proactive dispute-prevention system that frees merchant cash flow trapped in reserve holds Learn how to build a documented chargeback protection workflow that drives your dispute ratio below 0.5% and earns faster reserve reductions. This step-by-step tutorial covers evidence trails, prevention controls, and data-backed negotiation tactics to unlock merchant cash flow. TL;DR Reserves are negotiable, […]
Why Physical Loyalty Cards Still Have a Place Loyalty card benefits are not limited to the reward printed on the card. A physical card can also put the business in front of a customer again after the transaction ends. It sits in a wallet, hangs from a keychain or appears the next time the customer […]
Why Chargebacks Can Become More Than a Refund Chargebacks for business owners can create problems well beyond losing one sale. A dispute can affect revenue immediately, interrupt expected cash flow and create extra work for the team responsible for gathering records and responding to the claim. One chargeback may be manageable. A pattern of them […]
Why EMV and Magnetic Stripe Cards Handle Security Differently EMV vs magnetic stripe is really a comparison between two very different ways of handling card-present payment data. Magnetic stripes rely on static card data. EMV chips add dynamic transaction security that makes copied payment data far less useful for creating counterfeit cards. That difference matters […]
Build Repeat Business With a Loyalty Program Customers Want to Use A customer loyalty program gives people a practical reason to come back. The strongest programs are usually easy to understand, easy to use and valuable enough that the reward actually matters to the customer. They do not need to be complicated. A simple punch […]
What Your Payment Pricing Model Really Changes The pricing model behind a merchant account determines more than the rate shown on a proposal. It affects how easily you can see processing costs, how processor markup appears on your statement and how much information you have when comparing one provider with another. Partnering with the right […]
Low Price Matters, but Look at the Whole Merchant Account Low-cost merchant services can make a real difference to a business that processes hundreds or thousands of payments every month. But the cheapest advertised rate is not always the cheapest account once every fee, contract term and service requirement enters the picture. The better question […]
Why Work With a Local Merchant Service Provider? A local merchant service provider can give businesses a closer point of contact for payment support, security and technology. The right provider can also help a business choose payment tools that fit how its customers prefer to pay. There hasn’t been a more successful change in technology […]
How the BAMS Low Price Guarantee Works The BAMS Low Price Guarantee gives business owners a structured way to compare payment processing costs before making a change. The five-step review looks beyond a single advertised rate and considers how a business actually accepts payments. In the day-to-day grind as a business owner, you’re in a […]
Connect Authorize.net to Your BigCommerce Store An Authorize.net BigCommerce setup connects your online store to a payment gateway so customers can submit card payments at checkout. Visa provides a helpful overview of how payment processing works across merchants, acquirers and issuers. BigCommerce is one of the top eCommerce platforms currently available and is the #1 […]
How the Pandemic Changed Online Shopping Behavior COVID-19 online shopping trends created a rapid shift in how consumers bought everyday products and how businesses reached their customers. While this article reflects the conditions of 2020, many of the eCommerce lessons around checkout, fulfillment, customer communication and payment costs remain useful for merchants today. Editor’s note: […]
