Battery failure!

One of our previous posts was about your small business "battery", or your contingencies you have in place to fall back on when "normal" things fail.

I saw firsthand a perfect example of a battery failing at one of my clients' the other day. They had a problem with their credit card processing terminal one evening, and had about 8 or 9 charges that they had to take manually. When they attempted to run them through the next day once the terminal was working, they found out that two didn't have all the information they needed. The staff had neglected to take down the final four numbers of the card in one instance, and the expiry date in the other.

So, as a result of this business not having it's "battery" properly charged by way of their staff all being properly trained on how to take down a manual credit card charge, this business was out $134!

Not only do you have to have the back-up plan in place (ie. take card info manually when the terminal goes down), but your staff all need to be properly trained in how to use it!