BerlinPacific.com Blog

We’ve made some interesting discoveries lately that could save your organization a lot of money on the cost of processing credit cards. This applies to people using Chase Paymentech and non-profits accepting American Express cards.

Chase Paymentech
The first item of interest is that if you’re a customer of Chase Paymentech, odds are you’re subject to a substantial billing error. We naturally won’t document on this blog how Chase Paymentech might be doing this. But we’re definitely available to take a look at your current bills. You can probably get a credit going back one year.

This also means that we’ll be able to use this opportunity to negotiate a better deal on your behalf.

Again, this isn’t a promise, but other firms are finding extraordinary savings.

If you’re a Chase Paymentech customer we definitely recommend you contact us.

Non-Profits and American Express
The second item is that we’ve had a 100% success rate helping non-profits substantially reduce the rate for processing American Express cards. We can help you work with the right people at American Express to quickly and painlessly reduce the costs of getting your donations via American Express cards.

We definitely encourage any non-profit to call us.

Better than money back guarantee
Remember there is no cost to discover if we can help you substantially reduce the costs of processing credit cards, be it with Chase Paymentech, American Express cards, or other processors. Any fees come out of your savings. There is no investment or risk on your part.

Prime Advantage, an amazing industrial buying group we encourage our manufacturing clients to work with, did a great interview with O’Neal Steel. O’Neal steel is a leading large steel company (service center) with dozens of locations and thousands of employees, exactly the kind of company we like to work with. They’re family owned and have been in business for 90 years. Fantastic people.

Here is a link to the Interview. We’ll include the text below.

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If your company pays federal taxes, like many you may not know all about the new IRS federal tax credits of 6.5 % for all spending on product development, especially employee salaries. Many companies aren’t aware of these new tax rules and just how much more is covered today, but our tax experts are.

The credit can go back 3 years plus the current year. The credit comes off your federal tax bill.

Any company that designs, develops, or improves products, processes, techniques, formulas, inventions, or software may be eligible. In fact, if a company has simply invested time, money, and resources toward the advancement and improvement of its products and processes, it may qualify.

Example – you spend $200,000 a year on employees who develop products. You qualify and get a $12,500 in credit off your federal tax bill per year, and you can go back three years plus save this year. That is $50,000 saved. Our experts told us the IRS is happy because you’re providing jobs. There may be additional credits for state taxes.

There is no charge to find out if you can save. It is a four minute conversation with our subject matter experts to find out if you qualify. Our tax experts are saving companies $20,000 to $750,000.

We encourage any CFOs, or Controller, or Accountants to reach out to us with an e-mail or call 212-247-2502.

What Qualifies as R+D?
You may wonder if your firm has spending that qualifies. “Qualifying research” runs the gamut from initiating designs, to testing products, to manufacturing process improvements. The great thing about this is that many companies spend money on developing products. Because of the current broad definition, if you’re involved with any of these things you may be eligible for R+D Tax Incentives.

• Designing new products including software or materials
• Designing innovative product features or techniques
• Generating prototypes and samples of new products – for testing and validation
• Developing new or improved treatments for materials
• Developing new or improved manufacturing processes
• Developing and designing scaled up manufacturing processes

R+D Tax Credits are awarded across a wide range of diverse activities, and our expert can determine what credits are available for your company. We think you’ll be surprised how much qualifies.

We will be happy to schedule a 15 minute conversation, either by phone or in person, to determine if you qualify for this and other government sponsored incentive program. We would like to put tax dollars back in your pocket. Please e-mail or call us at 212-247-2502.

We’re uploading different document to the site Scribd.

Visibility and Vendor Cost Management How to find hidden savings in your services spend. It relates to Telecom Expense Management, but also IT support and maintenance contract costs, Waste and Recycling Costs, Credit Card processing costs, etc

Vendor Cost Management for C Level Officers It uses Telecom Expense Management as an example, but also mentions our practices Private Jet Management and Maintenance Costs, Freight and Shipping Costs, Utility Costs / Power Costs

We also uploaded our simple overview of Visibility and Managing Recurring IT Costs It relates especially to Telecom Expense Management, and IT support and maintenance contract costs but the general principles relates to vendor costs in general.

They’re a pretty amazing repository of documents.

-Anders

You want to get to the root cause of your costs. In the case of health care, high claims create high insurance premiums.

Research shows that

• 30% of all medical spending can be attributed to waste
• 22% of patients have been given the wrong diagnosis by their local doctors
• 61% of patients are currently prescribed the wrong treatment regimen

If you reduce claims by reducing the number of wrong treatments, you can reduce costs long term. At the same time you can save your employees money with reduced Co pays and deductibles. As the ultimate bonus, you could possibly saving their lives.

Berlin Pacific, as part of its practice for managing health care costs, has access to a program called Best Doctors that can help make sure your employees get the right care. Best Doctors does this by getting the leading experts in the field to review your employees’ diagnosis and treatment options for serious conditions with potential for large claims. They can do this at no cost to the employee or their family members. Best Doctors acts as the employee’s advocate to make sure he or she gets the correct treatment, and not an incorrect or unnecessarily expensive treatment which doesn’t help.

If you get the wrong treatment, you still have to do the right treatment later. So that is two treatments. Why not just have one correct treatment and get better sooner?

Some benefits include -

• This is supplemental - you can start it now.
• If people have health conditions today, you can get them help now.
• You can get employees healthy faster!
• You can save an average of $20,000 per case in wasted claim expenses.
• Free if you do business with our health care practice. Costs no more than $6 per employee per month if you don’t.

Typically only big companies with a minimum of 5000 employees qualify for this service. Fortunately, we have the ability to give smaller firms access to this service. This is a key part of our practice for helping firms manage health care costs. We believe the problem with Health Insurance is not the carrier you have, but how the employees are utilizing the coverage.

To learn more send me an e-mail at amikkelsen@berlinpacific.com, call me at 212-247-2502, or go here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7unV366Qr4&feature=player_embedded

Alternatively an overview can be found here:
http://www.berlinpacific.com/docs/Best_Doctors.pdf

For many firms, especially with blue collar employees, 20% of new hires are eligible for tax credits. This can be as much as $9,000 for each qualifying new hire. Some firms are also in economic development zones. We can help give you the peace of mind of knowing you’re getting all the tax credits you’re eligible for.

To read a full overview go here
Employee Tax Credits

Our experts will work for you to get you the tax credits available to you. This can reduce or even eliminate tax liability. You’ll get a flexible process that works with every company to eliminate the headaches and 86% of the paperwork.

You will get a free study to let you know how you qualify. While every company can benefit, the best candidates economic development zones and have lots of blue collar workers. Manufacturing, fast food, and retail do particularly well.

If you have 100 employees you could be saving $10,000 to $100,000 a year. Average saving can be anywhere from 100+ per employee to 1,000+ per employee.

When you work with us, you’ll automatically get credits for
• New Hires
• Being in a special economic zone
Your Berlin Pacific experts will process ongoing credits for new hires and discover if you’re eligible for past and future credits based on the location of each of your buildings, stores or offices.

employee_tax_credits.doc

We’ve added a new subject matter expert who can help organizations reduce the management and maintencance costs owning or leasing a jet long term. This can save organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

There are two big ways you can save.

1. Confirm that you do not overspend on maintenance.
We’ve all wondered about our car repair bills. Jets are no different.
We will review your last maintenance invoice at no charge. We’ll review it for errors and over charging. We are only paid when you save.

2. Select the right management company for your company’s aircraft and profile.
With so many management companies with different strengths it can be hard to know which management company is the best for your jet. We can help make sure you get the best deal, and ensure revenue from chartering your aircraft is maximized.

Right now you typically pay $1,200 per month for a non-expert to review your monthly management statements. This is based upon estimated CEO and Executive Assistant hourly pay and time spent per month to review an average management statement.

Why spend all that time and money when you can have an expert do it?

Want to learn more - call us at 212-247-2502.