Category: Tips

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Taking Money From Clients by ACH and Wire Transfers

We operate globally and so to keep our costs down we have pretty tight control on our credit card payment processing. To pay us not only must you have a CVV code match with your credit card but an AVS X and Y match. That means that the street name and zip code must match what is on file with your credit card company.

For some global clients this has caused problems when there bank does not support AVS matching. This is where a wire transfer may be preferable. But how is a wire transfer different from an ACH or direct deposit transaction. A wire transfer is done by the paying party – the client. You the business owner supply your bank address, routing number and account number. The payee, the client, then goes to their bank and processes the transfer. The client will typically be assessed a currency transaction charge and other fees. Here in Maryland for me to send a wire transfer my bank charges me $60. For me to receive a wire transfer my bank charges a $12 fee even if the sending party has said they will pay all charges. Wire transfers are safe to do and my bank says that they are one way transactions into my bank account, meaning that the client cannot withdraw money from my account after I have shared my account information.

Now ACH is different. I am very careful who I allow ACH access to my checking account. I have one long term client and my credit card processing companies. With ACH it is possible for a party to remove money from your account tht you have not authorized. I found out however if you as a business report a fraudulent ACH withdraw in two days, you will get your money refunded to you and the bank where the fraudulent charge originated from will have to collect the money back from their client which originated the charge. Good reason if you allow ACH access to your checking to be vigilant in regards to reviewing account transactions daily or every other day.

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Shedding My PDA for a Smartphone

I have long carried a HP iPaq PDA for appointment scheduling and now I am living without it now that I have upgraded my cell phone to a smartphone. I have an LG enV Touch. Although this is not a 3G phone, it has many of the features that I wanted and like.

With a free software download from LG I can now sync Outlook on my two computers and carry my appointments on my phone and drop my PDA entirely. I did find out that I had to turn off the automatic alert setting in Outlook for my appointments as when they were transferred to my phone, my new phone was constantly doing an irritating alert to tell me of my next appointment or task that had to be done.

The new phones that are available now are really wonderful and a real improvement over what was available just two years ago. One of the things I really like about my LG enV Touch is that I get free web email. Now, I do not want to be inundated with office email in my down time or when I am away from my office, but to have the ability when I travel to offer clients a way to contact me via email to my cell phone is excellent! Better yet is the ability for my family to get me by email, text or phone call when I am away from home.

The only thing I really miss about my PDA are my games. I used to while away time at the soccer field for practice or at piano lessons playing solitaire, so I’ll just have to buy that for my phone now. If you haven’t upgraded your phone for awhile, definitely check out the new features and options. I only pay $9.99 a month to get Internet access for 100 pages and free unlimited web mail with my mobile service. I don’t think that I would have paid $30 a month for the email, but for $10 a month I am glad to have it.

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Is Earthlink Blocking Your Emails?

I’ve recently had a problem with Earthlink and Mindspring blocking emails from my main domain to certain clients. It is problematic and annoying. Here’s what I have done to resolve the problem.

1. First, always make sure you are reviewing your junk mail folder as typically bounces and non-deliveries of emails will be sent here. If you don’t routinely check this file, you will never know if your email has been bounced back to you.

2. If you do find that your emails are regularly (more than several times) is being bounced back with a blocked mail message from Earthlink, then you need to take action. For me the first thing I did was to correspond with those clients using a different email account like my Gmail or MSN account until the problem was resolved. I then replied to one of the blocked email messages and Earthlink sent me instructions on how to resolve the problem.

3. I have to get the IP address of my mail server from my web host. Sometimes you can find this IP address in your domain records under the MX listing. If you don’t see it there, ask your web host.

4. Then using the syntax Earthlink wants in the subject line, send an email to Earthlink asking them to whitelist your IP address.

I found that they had not blocked my IP address as they confirmed that it was not on their blocked list and told me that it was most likely an intermittent problem.

It is a pain to have to go through this hassle, but if it had been blocked, this would have effectively resolved the problem or advised me of a bigger issue that needed more attention like my web host being a spammer haven with a whole block of IP addresses blocked. If you find that this would be the case, it would be a good reason to change web hosts immediately.

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How to Add a Blog Post to WordPress

If you have never used WordPress sometime how to add a post is extremely confusing and especially if you want to publish on a future date. Here are the steps that we teach to our new blog writers on how to add a post.

Download and install IE Spell for your browser as many WordPress control panel spell checkers are not functional.

Visit www.IESpell.com. This little spell checker is then accessed from your tools menu. If you use Firefox, do a Google search and download a plug-in that you can use for spell checking.

Login to the blog control panel. You will be on the blog dashboard page once logged in.

Click Posts in the left side bar. The blog listing screen will open. If you have a draft post or pending post you will see it in the links on top of the blog post list.

To create a new blog post click Add New in the post menu in the left sidebar. The next screen will show the blog post entry control panel.

This is crucial – if you have created your blog post in Word or used one from the client, you MUST copy your post, paste it into Notepad, and then copy it from Notepad and then paste into the blog entry field. If you do not do this you will carry hidden font and character styles into the blog post which will be visible when published. You can typically access Notepad from the Accessories menu on your computer in your Microsoft Office products.

Once on the blog post control panel, type in or paste your blog title in the very top one line field. Paste in from Notepad or create your blog post in the larger box underneath the blog title.

To insert a link in your blog post, open another browser tab, go to the web page that you will want the link to direct to, copy the address from the address bar, must include the http:// in front of the link. Go back to the WordPress control panel and using your mouse drag to highlight the text you want to carry the hyperlink. I like to drag from the end of the phrase to the front to have better control over the link and so a space in not inadvertently picked up in the link. Then click the chain or hyperlink icon in the tool bar just above the post entry field. A small window will pop up, paste the link into the very first field overwriting the http:// that is already there, select in the drop down, open link page in a new window, and then click insert. WordPress will then underline and hyperlink your text in the blog post.

Make sure to spell check your blog post using IE Spell.

On the right side bar now create tags in the tag field that are keywords to find your blog post. I use all lower case for tags unless it is a proper name. I usually select one, two or three words based on the blog post.  Make sure to click Add.

Then look just below the tag field and select categories. Categories are like blog navigation so be judicious in adding them. All categories should be proper case.

In the top right box that says publish; look for Publish Immediately and EDIT. Do not click any other buttons at all like draft pending review or okay.

Click the Edit link to open the publish time calendar. If you are publishing ahead, change your date and time. I like to set the clock to 5:00 am as the publish time if I am scheduling a blog post ahead so it is there the first time someone looks. After setting the date and time, click PUBLISH. This is important to not click the okay button or preview button as your post may end up as a draft and not properly scheduled. After you have clicked publish you can go back to the blog post master page and click your blog post to preview it.

Always make sure you preview your blog before you log out to make sure you don’t have any funny characters and that your spacing is correct and images are in place.

To double check that all is well, click Posts on the left menu you will see your blog post in the link at the top that says scheduled and also in the blog post list with a countdown of hours until the publish time.