Original article by Understanding and Improving Your Credit (c) Understanding and Improving Your Credit - Read full story here.

Original article by Understanding and Improving Your Credit (c) Understanding and Improving Your Credit - Read full story here.

Original article by Understanding and Improving Your Credit (c) Understanding and Improving Your Credit - Read full story here.

That’s the quickest way to get setup with something, but if store owners knew how much money they were leaving on the table they would probably think twice. Here are just a few ways that POS software can help a retail store save and make more money.

1. Eliminate pricing mistakes at the register

Cash registers are definitely a “dumb” system. All it does is record what the cashier puts in, spits out a receipt, and later gives the store owner a receipt with all of the money they’ve brought in that day. It doesn’t have any inventory management capabilities, and in nearly all cases it doesn’t support a barcode scanner. That means your cashier needs to look at the price tag and manually enter the price in. Just like any other manual process, this is very prone to error. On the other hand, a POS system does keep track of your entire inventory and integrates with a barcode scanner. All the cashier has to do is scan the barcode on the product and the proper price is automatically entered for them. Pricing errors may be small each time, but over the course of a year they quickly add up.

2. Time equals money, and POS software helps save lots of time

Running a retail store is extremely time consuming for the business owner. Often retailers go into the business because they want to work with customers, not because of all the management that’s required. Things like managing employees, doing payroll, keeping track of inventory, re-ordering products, and accounting are all things that take up vast amounts of time. A cash register can’t really help effectively with any of those management tasks, but POS software can. Most modern POS software packages have integrated employee time clocks, inventory management, purchase ordering, and accounting system integration built in. With the POS system doing most of the heavy lifting on those management tasks, it can cut the time spent on them in half (or more). Saving time in these areas helps the store owner focus on tasks that bring more money in like working with customers, training employees, and bringing new customers to the store.

3. Identifying the best & worst selling products

Depending on how big a store is, keeping track of inventory can be deceivingly complicated. And with each added inventory item, it adds complexity in tracking and re-ordering them to keep products in stock. Often store owners just re-order what was sold, but that is far from the most efficient method of stocking items. Many small retail stores don’t consider important factors that should be going into re-ordering decisions like the speed at which products sell or seasonality of a particular product’s sales. For example, a hardware store might stock salt during the winter in cold areas. If they sell out in February, should they re-order more? If they do, how much should they order? When the store uses a cash register, it’s impossible to get insight into things like this. But with POS software, there are many reports and features that can aid the store owner re-order the right number of products at the right time. By keeping your best sellers in stock you can maximize sales, and you can minimize waste by not re-ordering poorly performing items.

Those are just three of the key areas that POS software can help retailers save and make more money with their store. Cash registers are a huge efficiency drain for a retail store, and many don’t even realize it. By putting a POS system in place and using it to its full potential store owners can save time, make more money, and have a more enjoyable and successful experience running their store. On top of that, there are now web-based POS systems that rival electronic cash registers in the startup costs. There has never been a better time for retailers to get started with point-of-sale!

About the Author: Tom Greenhaw Jr. founded Cashier Live with his father Tom Sr. Cashier Live is a point-of-sale software developer, specializing in all small business POS software solutions. Cashier Live offers solutions including, but not limited to, pharmacy, book shop, and grocery store POS software. Small business owners can now try a trial of free POS software for a limited time on Cashier Live’s site.

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by Money Hacker

Original article by Sherin Dev (c) Moneyhacker - Read full story here.

A mother handles myriad responsibilities in a household. It not only includes running the household and taking care of children and family but also today, many working mothers are planning and aspiring for the future needs for their children like their education, health and marriage. While any mother concentrates on executing these responsibilities with utmost diligence, they may not necessarily be aware of the most optimal way of reaching her own financial goals to ensure a good education and life for their children and hence the importance of financial planning.

While the market today is flooded with myriad investment options such as insurance, mutual funds, fixed deposits etc, as a mother its very important for a woman to identify the investment options best suited for her own and her family’s goals and time frame.

The first and foremost step to financial planning for mothers is to identify and set their financial goals. Some of the common financial goals for any mother irrespective if earning or homemakers are saving for the education and marriage needs of her children. In addition to these, a mother also needs to ensure that her life and health is protected and insured as well. While the investment needs of working mothers and stay at home mothers can more or less be the same, they need to plan their insurance or protection needs differently.

Most working mothers contribute a certain amount of money every month towards their household expenses and child care, because of which their families are used to a particular standard of living. It therefore becomes very important for working mothers to take care that they are not under insured so that in the case of an unfortunate event of their demise, their children do not suffer from any financial stress. Working mothers should also take care to have sufficient health insurance to protect themselves against accidents or sudden critical illnesses.

Similarly while stay at home mothers may not be contributing financially towards the household expenditure, they are the glue of the whole family in every other way. It becomes essential therefore that they are not only insured but more important also covered against any critical illnesses and accidents.

The next key financial goal for any parent including mothers is saving for child’s education and marriage. It is one of the major concerns for all Indian parents. While it may not be a financial burden for mothers in the initial years, the cost of education can become serious a matter of concern once the child goes to college. To reduce the burden of the exorbitant cost of education, mothers should start saving and investing for it as early as possible. There are various investment options available in the market to address this need such as child education plans in the market offered by insurance companies and some mutual funds as well as other form of savings. While investing and deciding the financial goal or corpus, it’s advisable for mothers to understand the nature of investment, time horizon, liquidity needs, rate of inflation as well as past performance to make a correct choice. For example a simple MBA may cost between Rs 4-8 lakhs today but 10-12 years down the line it may cost Rs. 25 lakh. Investment options like “child education insurance” protect the child’s education against the parent’s death and make sure that their education and career plans are uninterrupted even in the bread earner’s absence.

Similarly for marriages, while gold has always a very attractive investment option for most women, it is not a very highly recommended one, given the rising prices. Mothers can even explore investing in fixed deposits and balanced funds offered by mutual fund companies and insurance companies for medium to long term horizon. They can even look at investing in equities if the they would require money in the time frame of 5-8 years. For women who can afford the cost of EMIs, investing in real estate is also an excellent option if you would like to leave your children with a home to live in. Working mothers can also avail tax benefits on home loan EMIs paid. In addition to these roughly 6 months of the family monthly expenditure should be kept in liquid cash for any emergency or sudden expenditure arising in the family.

Lastly, apart from covering their life and saving for their children’s education and marriage, it is essential for all mothers to plan for their retirement. Women, especially working mothers, need to plan their retirement so that they are able to maintain their own standard of living without being dependent on children or anyone else. Apart from the provident fund for working mothers, which will give them a lump sum of money on retirement, they should also invest in retirement plans offered by life insurers and mutual funds. Stay at home mothers should also explore investing money regularly as early as possible in retirement plans.

Hence, the key to a good and efficient financial planning is to start investing as early as possible. Mothers, given the many members of their family they take care of, even starting early with small amounts will help them build a big corpus with the power of compounding.

Article is written by Aviva India

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by Money Hacker

Original article by Sherin Dev (c) Moneyhacker - Read full story here.

We’ve all done the Conspicuous Tip — you wait until the barista or employee behind the counter is looking before you stuff the dollar in the tip jar, lest you be thought a non-tipper. But should that apply in a confusing situation involving a hotel shuttle and a cupholder full of bills? Bill found himself wondering if his failure to narrate his act of tipping makes him a bad consumer.

We’re going to go ahead and preemptively tell Bill that no, you are not a bad consumer. The tip was given, money went from the consumer to the person providing the service, and really, this story is about a sassy shuttle driver and whether or not there’s a good way to tip conspicuously.

A few weeks ago I had an early flight from Chicago O’Hare. Since I had a bit of a drive to O’Hare, I stayed the night at a nearby LaQuinta. I don’t normally stay at those properties but I had some points that would soon expire so I took advantage of the free night.

The next morning, I took the free shuttle to the airport. I was the only passenger, and the driver, though not very friendly at all, was efficient at getting me to the airport through traffic. Not New York cab driver efficient, but efficient nonetheless.

While riding in the back seat, I noted that the cupholder between the front seat was filled with one-dollar bills. I figured that this is where people put the tips, so I dropped a couple of bucks into it. The driver apparantly didn’t notice this. We pull up to the airport and he gets out and puts my bags on the curb. I smile and tell him to have a great day.

Now comes the part that makes me wish I could have crawled back in and removed those two dollars. He smirks at me and says, “We usually tip the driver.”

Dumbfounded at actually being told that I was actually expected to tip him, I stammered that I had left his tip in the cupholder. He just kind of grunted and got back into his car. Looking back, I think that his cupholder full of bills was a “suggestion” to the passengers, not actually the place to put the tip.

So, was I a bad consumer? Was this a simple misunderstanding? Is it common, in Chicago, for someone to actually request a tip in that manner? I can tell you that when I worked as a pizza delivery driver, where tips are customary, if I were stiffed and then told the customer “We usually tip the driver,” I would have been fired. I did write a complaint letter, and while I hope I didn’t get him fired, I do hope that he was told to be a little more friendly. I travel on business quite frequently and I have never had anyone come out and ask for a tip… then again, I usually tip pretty well.

The real dilemma here is — do you politely inform someone in this case that yes, you did tip, sass the driver back with a sarcastic comment or just leave quietly, dignity intact?

(avitania)

Original article by Mary Beth Quirk (c) The Consumerist - Read full story here.

Faced with regulatory hurdles too tall for it to leap, AT&T has announced that it has pulled the plug on its proposed plan to purchase T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion.

The merger, which would have made AT&T the largest wireless provider in the nation, was widely criticized by opponents who believed that by removing T-Mobile from the marketplace, it would have taken away a lower-cost option for consumers. It would also, along with Verizon Wireless, have effectively created a duopoly in the U.S. wireless market, meaning less competition and innovation.

Parul P. Desai, policy counsel for Consumers Union called today’s announcement, “an early holiday present” for consumers.

“From the first day that this deal was announced, we have warned regulators, lawmakers, and consumers of the dangerous consequences of this merger,” says Desai. “Regulators clearly saw through AT&T’s claims of better service and saw what we saw – a combined AT&T/T-Mobile would mean higher prices and fewer choices for consumers. It would mean a wireless market dominated by a powerful duopoly with little incentive to compete with other carriers.

“We applaud the Justice Department and the FCC for their actions. We urge them to apply this same strict level of scrutiny to future spectrum transactions as Verizon attempts to consolidate more spectrum.”

In August, the Justice Dept. filed a lawsuit to block the merger. That trial was set to begin in early 2012.

In late November, the FCC announced it would hold an administrative hearing — essentially a trial in which the merging businesses would need to prove that the deal is in the best interest of the public — after the completion of the DOJ trial. On Thanksgiving, AT&T withdrew its merger request with the FCC, claiming it wanted to focus on the Justice Dept. trial.

Here is the statement from the Death Star:

AT&T Inc. said today that after a thorough review of options it has agreed with Deutsche Telekom AG to end its bid to acquire T-Mobile USA, which began in March of this year.

The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry. It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.

“AT&T will continue to be aggressive in leading the mobile Internet revolution,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “Over the past four years we have invested more in our networks than any other U.S. company. As a result, today we deliver best-in-class mobile broadband speeds – connecting smartphones, tablets and emerging devices at a record pace – and we are well under way with our nationwide 4G LTE deployment.

“To meet the needs of our customers, we will continue to invest,” Stephenson said. “However, adding capacity to meet these needs will require policymakers to do two things. First, in the near term, they should allow the free markets to work so that additional spectrum is available to meet the immediate needs of the U.S. wireless industry, including expeditiously approving our acquisition of unused Qualcomm spectrum currently pending before the FCC. Second, policymakers should enact legislation to meet our nation’s longer-term spectrum needs.

“The mobile Internet is a dynamic industry that can be a critical driver in restoring American economic growth and job creation, but only if companies are allowed to react quickly to customer needs and market forces,” Stephenson said.

To reflect the break-up considerations due Deutsche Telekom, AT&T will recognize a pretax accounting charge of $4 billion in the 4th quarter of 2011. Additionally, AT&T will enter a mutually beneficial roaming agreement with Deutsche Telekom.

What remains to be seen is what will happen to T-Mobile now that the deal is done. The company had been the target of takeover rumors by just about every other wireless provider in the months leading up to last March’s announcement. But as AT&T was unable to purchase T-Mobile, there is no chance that Verizon (currently the largest cell phone carrier in the U.S.) could make such a deal work. A more reasonable partner would be the similarly sized Sprint.

T-Mobile USA could be also spun off into its own company, though it’s been reported that the amount of cash that would generate in the short term would be significantly less than what a sale would earn.

Original article by Chris Morran (c) The Consumerist - Read full story here.

As we reported last week, a recent survey showed that the website for Toys R Us came in dead last among top online retailers for its average delivery time. Unfortunately, this news came too late for Consumerist reader Victor who had already been waiting 11 days for his order from the site.

See, Victor had found at good deal on something called a Silly Hair Lalaloopsy doll (these kids today, I tell ya), which ToysRus.com was selling for $29.97. So he placed an order for three and received a notice on Dec. 5 that they were being shipped by UPS.

But every time Victor checked the tracking on his shipment, it never updated beyond the “UPS shipping label has been created” stage. So after almost two weeks of waiting, he contacted the company to see what was going on.

Writes Victor:

They told me that there was a shipping error and they would just refund my order. I had a problem with this because these dolls are very hard to find now, so I asked that they replace the missing shipment instead.

They said that no, they wouldn’t be doing that, but I should just go to a Toys R Us Brick and Mortar store and get them.

The problem with that was twofold — one, they’re hard to find in stores, even The World’s Biggest Toy Store, and two, Toys R Us is now charging $49.99 for the dolls I ordered and paid for 3 weeks ago for $29.97 each.

That’s a difference of over $60 across the three dolls.

I told them if they wanted to give me a $60 Toys R Us credit to account for this difference, I
could try to find them in store and buy them.

However, the wind-up customer service robots that operate out of the Toys R Us HQ on the North Pole seemed to take Victor’s suggestion as a price-matching request, which they quickly shot down.

“While ToysRUs.com and BabiesRUs.com try to stay competitive with pricing as much as possible, we do not price match against any online or land-based store,” wrote TRU. “Also, it is not our policy to honor promotions, price reductions, or sale prices outside of the time period they are offered. I am sorry for any disappointment or inconvenience this may cause you. Therefore we cannot credit you for the difference of the price listed.”

The canned apology did not sit that well with Victor.

“Toys R Us lost my shipment of dolls, refused to replace it, suggested I buy it in-store at $20 more per doll myself, punishing me with a tab more than $60 extra because they made an error,” he writes. “I told them they failed at Customer Service school. That was about as nicely as I could put the summary of this situation.”

We here at Consumerist understand that mistakes happen, especially around the holidays. But it’s one thing to allow someone to place an order and not have the inventory to fulfill it. It’s another to take that order, charge the customer, send them shipping info and then refuse to be amenable to a reasonable suggestion.

Thank heavens Toys R Us stores are staying open for some unholy amount of hours leading up to Christmas, so that you won’t have to deal with the company’s website for last-minute gifts.

Original article by Chris Morran (c) The Consumerist - Read full story here.

With the squalls surrounding the filibuster of Richard Cordray’s nomination for director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it was easy to miss what was going on with Elizabeth Warren, the creator of the CFPB. Ms. Warren had so infuriated Republicans in Congress that although she was the logical choice for director, the President thought the better part of valor to avoid ideological and personal controversy by choosing Cordray, whose profile is much less political, and whose background more enforcement-oriented.

So Ms. Warren decided to run for Teddy Kennedy’s old seat in the Senate, currently occupied—temporarily—by Scott Brown, a darling of Wall Street. As her campaign got into full swing, some interesting things started to happen. Although early polls indicated that Ms. Warren was substantially behind Mr. Brown, by early December she became the front runner, by a hefty seven point margin; after that happened, Sen. Brown suddenly seemed to come to his more moderate senses, and broke ranks with Republican caucus to vote in favor of the Cordray nomination.

[Article: Who's Killing the CFPB? We Are.]

That might’ve been strange enough by itself, but things got much stranger very quickly. A group called Crossroads GPS started running an attack ad in Massachusetts against Ms. Warren, portraying Ms. Warren as a tool of Wall Street! It cites her chairmanship of the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the bank bailout in asserting that the bailout was a failure, and that she was responsible for the payment of bonuses to Wall Street executives, and that the Panel committed that most heinous of 21st-century crimes in—it did not create jobs.

Happily, factcheck.org quickly pointed out that the Crossroads video was rife with disinformation, and in general people seem to be laughing off the absurd pot-calls-the-kettle-black attack, particularly because the first Crossroads ad directed against Warren made precisely the opposite point, painting her as a tool of Occupy Wall Street. Crossroads GPS is closely aligned with Karl Rove, the man largely responsible for the brilliant fiscal policy of the Bush 43 administration.

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Elizabeth Warren started life as a Republican, coming from a somewhat less than middle-class background in Oklahoma. She has earned herself a reputation as a first-class and impassioned consumer advocate, and her history of thought and analytical work earned her a chair at Harvard law school. She openly acknowledges sympathy with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and in fact identifies herself as the creator of the intellectual foundation of the movement. That said, it is also true that she has demonstrated a profound knowledge of the working of the financial system in the United States, and did not oppose the bailout itself. Moreover, she recently declined to endorse the Occupy Harvard petition, to the great surprise of supporter and detractor alike. In other words, Ms. Warren has actually maintained a quite balanced viewpoint for many years; she is ardently pro-consumer, but she is not at all anti-business or anti-Wall Street. Instead, she attacks the excesses of Wall Street, particularly when consumer bears the brunt of those excesses.

In times that are less partisan, she would be seen as middle-of-the-road, but with a gift for passionate rhetoric in defense of the consumer. She understands that the 1%, generally speaking, achieved that status by selling something to the 99%; as the song goes “you can’t have one without the other.”

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Let’s hope that 11 months from now, Ms. Warren is seen for what she is: a hard-working and dedicated public servant who would probably make a better Senator then bureaucrat anyway; a woman whose brains and efforts have earned her status and respect in the academic and policy worlds; and most importantly, a person who has centrist views and thus understands that one not need be anti-business to support and defend the rights of consumers.

Image: U.S. Treasury Department, via Wikimedia Commons

Original article by J. J. Bianco (c) Credit.com News + Advice - Read full story here.

In 2011, there were plenty of cars with a lot of hype behind them, only to end up doing poorly with consumers. Failing to meet high expectations could almost be worse than just being as terrible as everyone thought you would be. So let’s toast a few of the flops of the 2011 American car market, shall we?

CNNMoney runs through 12 notable disappointments on the market in the past year that had a lot of buzz built up, only to fizzle out once drivers got their hands on them.

Fiat 500: You might remember this one as the car Jennifer Lopez drives through her old neighborhood in an ad campaign that was much derided, as it was questioned whether she was actually in the Bronx or just back in L.A. What? J. Lo didn’t convince you to buy one? Dealers weren’t convinced either, even with lower gas prices. They’d predicted selling 50,000 cars, but only unloaded 17,444 as of November.

Jaguar XF: Four years after its launch and a strong luxury car market couldn’t stop the XF’s sales from dropping around 28%.

Honda Insight: The cheaper-than-before 2011 Insight was meant to boost sales, as the cheapest hybrid on the market. So far, so good! That is, until reviews of a jouncy ride and too much road noise came in. Sales dropped off sharply this year, and CNN says the Hyundai Sonata beat it this year so far as hybrids go.

BMW 550i GT: When the 550i came on the market a few years ago, BMW executives were so confident in it, that they didn’t send any more of their traditional 5-series sport wagons to the U.S. But combined with a $65,000 price tag and a super heavy body means lower sales for the 550i. proportions, the 550i remains a rare misstep for the Bavarian marketing machine.

Nissan Cube: Sure, a few people might want an over-stylized car that makes onlookers think, “What the heck is that thing?” but most buyers have been staying away from the design mess that is the Nissan Cube.

The 2012 Honda Civic: This car won the dubious honor of the most despised car of last year, calling it “the bland, cheezy, ninth-generation Civic. Reviewers panned it as clunky and dreadfully dull, while our expert big brothers at Consumer Reports pointed out weak brakes, excessive body lean and annoying road noise — and even dropped it off their Recommended list.

Check out the rest of the disappointments over at CNNMoney.

The most disliked cars of 2011/a> [CNNMoney]

Original article by Mary Beth Quirk (c) The Consumerist - Read full story here.