How to Prevent Funding Delays

It’s a nightmare that many businesses have faced: they perform a large job, collect payment on a card, but the money does not hit the account. Being patient, these business owners wait another day but still nothing, so they call in and after waiting on hold, they learn the funds are being held for one of many potential reasons. After spending even more time on the phone and more days of headache and stress, the business finally gets the revenue it earned and needs to continue operating smoothly, albeit rather late. The question every business owner asks is, how can this be prevented and what needs to be done to achieve that goal?

The first thing every business should do is ensure it has a good relationship with its processor and although there are many reasons why this is important, one particular reason is due to the fact that a good relationship with your process will ensure they understand your business. For example, let’s assume an HVAC business normally processes $50k per month with an average ticket of $750 and a ceiling per ticket of $5k. If this business at random tries to process a credit card payment of $12k, funds are likely to be held until the transaction is verified. If this HVAC company has a good relationship with their processor, they would be able to call this person right away and have them help resolve the issue which saves significant time and headache. Although it can vary significantly, it is common for this strategy to reduce the wait time to only two extra days compared to an entire week. If there is no true relationship with the processor, you will be sent directly to phone support alone which can be extremely frustrating when your money is being held.

There is another important way to prevent funding delays, however, yet very few business practice it. In the above example, one of the best things the HVAC company can do is contact their processor and let them know in advance they have an unusually large transaction coming up. If this HVAC company has a good processor, the business can reach out to the processor and the processor will request some information, such as an approved estimate/invoice, the customer information, and payment terms, and the processor can then have everything ready to confirm and validate the transaction. In this situation, the processor is able to have everything lined up so the moment when the funding delay is triggered and the transaction review begins, all of the information is already available. When this happens, the funds transfer on schedule and the business owner is saved much time and headache.

In summary, if you want to prevent and greatly reduce the risk of funding delays to your business, you need to do two things:

1. have a good relationship with your processor
2. let your processor know when you have an unusually big order coming up

By doing these two simple things, you can prevent many issues and maximize the value of the processor that you use. As always, if you ever have any questions related to funding delays or other parts of payment processing, please do let me know and I would be more than happy to help!