Intuit is now going to make it even easier to see and understand the fees associated with QuickBooks Payments, also formerly known as Intuit Merchant Services. Currently, when a credit card payment is deposited to a bank account, you will see a corresponding fee with "BANKCARD DES:DISCOUNT" in the memo. This fee will only be the percentage of the payment as if was a swiped, qualified card, for example. It is not until at the end of month when the credit card statement is generated that any remaining amounts are deducted as one lump "monthly" fee for all payments that are subject to higher percentages, such as mid-qualified and nonqualified corporate and reward cards. This has always been confusing because

a

) the end of the month total fee gets confused with any set monthly fee just for processing credit cards, depending on the plan and

b

) you have to wait until the monthly statement to see what the actual % rates and associated fees for only the

total

payments per discount rate were.

This will all change soon:

1. You will see new category descriptions for amounts posted to your bank statement.

3. Intuit Deposit - All deposits for your payments.

4. Intuit Tran Fee - All transaction fees for payments you accept.

5. Intuit Account Fee - Any debit or credit to your account related to account fees.

7. All transaction fees during the month will reflect the actual percentage amounts of your payments as they are posted. There will be no more adjustments at the end of the month.

9. A simpler, easy-to-read monthly statement. I haven't seen an example of this yet, but I sure hope it will no longer have that faded, courier font like it was produced from a typewriter.

11. A new number for all voice authorizations: 888-301-3246. I've never had to do a voice authorization so I don't know how this compares to before.

13. Customer credit card statements will show your business name starting with IN * for payments charged to their credit card.

I always thought that Intuit statements were clearer than other credit card payment processors, who I believe make it very difficult for merchants to compare rates, especially when they tack on so many little fees here and there. And with this upgrade, Intuit will be even more transparent. With the added convenience of being able to process and view credit card payments immediately and have them batched automatically and deposited in QuickBooks, this is just one more reason why I always recommend QuickBooks Payments to my clients.