In a way, it is like programming or a particularly boring board game. You learn the rules and apply them to the inputs: receipts, bills, invoices and expenses. But all the time I find myself delaying and avoiding keeping my books up to date.

The final straw was me realizing on Thursday that I hadn’t been treating PayPal properly. I’d been treating it as “undeposited funds”, when really I should have been treating it as a bank account. It wasn’t a big deal before I started getting a flood of payments via PayPal primarily from my overseas clients . So, I downloaded my past year history and entered all of it that way.

Of course, that meant I needed to correct (with journal transactions), all transactions I’d entered inappropriately as petty cash or undeposited funds. Laboriously, line by line, I got it all to balance and be understandable. Like I said, I can do it, but it makes me want to pound my fists into the desk in bored frustration and irritation at the time this is taking.

Bleah and bleah again. I’m definitely outsourcing that job as soon as possible. I’ve got an interview with a bookkeeper this Thursday. It will be money well spent not to waste my time on stuff I find so incredibly boring.

Technorati Tags: accounting, outsourcing

Technorati Tags: Accounting, Business, Programs

I did find several cheaper banks. This one is charging me $5 a month for online access, which is ridiculous. But it is small potatoes for a business, and what I was really interested in was the service. Sometimes you have to pay for service, after all. When a business-owner friend recommended them, I quit my analysis and just made the leap.

So far, I’m glad I chose them

Setting up the account was great. I met my wife at the bank at lunch, with both of our daughters in tow. A five year-old and a two year-old are not really most bankers favorite people to be hanging around during account setup. Our banker, Brooke, gave my daughters stuffed bears and they played happily the whole time. Her grace helped immensely.

Then, within a couple days we got a handwritten note in the mail thanking us for our business. This was followed by a phone call a couple days after that.

All the normal stuff is available at the bank. Checking, online access & billpay. But this bank seems to have something else, a commitment to customer service.

Technorati Tags: Bank of the West, reviews, banking, small-business

Short answer, it is fraud

Organized criminals have your credit or (much much worse) your debit card number. They are going to rip you off for as long as they possibly can. It won’t end until you take drastic action. If you have a credit card, possibly closing the card and getting another is sufficient, though I doubt it. But if you have a debit card, the hard and bad news is that you must physically close the actual linked checking account to stop the debit fraud drain.

My Experience

The fraud started with a huge hit of $1,200, followed by sets of four to eight smaller withdrawals every week to ten days. It continued for six months until I closed the attached checking account. Closing the debit card had no effect, and did not stop the fraud. Calling the bank and reporting the problem only got each fraud refunded after it was committed, it never cut off the fraud source itself.

When I was tracking down the companies involved with the fraud, I was initially quite confused. They included the following:

• A.C.E.S.A BRA.MARTBARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A BRA.TARBARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A BRA.TARRBARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A BRA.VENDBARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A ENT.ACC.BARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A GRANOLL-BARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A LA JONQ-BARCELONA
• A.C.E.S.A SAL.ACC.BARCELONA
• AUTOPISTAS AUMAR SVALENCIA
• AUTOST CONFINE STAENZA
• AUTST VENEZIA ESTZA TARV
• Alimentacion Nostacullera <— This is the one which hit me for $1,200

What I think is happening in Spain

No Spanish citizen has confirmed this for me, but I did have some spanish translation help in figuring out what ties these companies together. From what I gather, “A.C.E.S.A.” is the Spanish toll-road system. The companies listed appear to be a combination of toll-taking stations, and restaurants/convenience-marts along the toll roads.

What I’ve pieced together from these clues and from hints in other articles is that the fraud works by the scammers cloning the card somehow. I am still not certain how they got mine, as it never left my possession. Regardless, they clone it and do the big initial hit. They know that after that hit, the card will be closed, so they sell it to “little fish”. The little fish use it to buy little things and to pay tolls along the toll road. The international Credit Card authorization system does not appear to require actual confirmation/authorization for amounts under approx. $25. Or, if it does require it, it doesn’t require it as a hard-and-fast rule, so if a system just runs the card a few times, it will probably be accepted.

That last part was confirmed by Visa employees, who noted that my account showed tons of rejections for the closed card. They said “the system is just running it until it goes through”. My guess is that the Spanish toll-credit system does that for “efficiency”, and that it only incidentally supports international organized crime.

The cure is to close the account

Let me repeat emphatically, these criminals are really good at what they are doing. They know the system better than the bank employees do. The only way to stop it is to close the linked account. Do yourself a favor, don’t fight it once the fraud starts its steady slow drain, hoping that “this one will be the last one”. Yes, you can call and dispute each and every one. I did. By the time you get the refund, you’ll have another $100 drained from your account. Stop the losses as soon as you get your first initial “big hit” refunded, close the account and completely change banks. Sorry, but that’s the only thing that worked for me.

Technorati Tags: banking, credit fraud, debit fraud, identity theft

I think my new bank, USAA is inexplicably missing from this list, but the ranking they come up with is:

1) Wells Fargo
2) Citibank
3) Bank of America
4) ETrade
5) Huntington
6) First National Bank of Omaha
7) HSBC USBank
9) Chase
9) Wachovia

See the original article for actual scores and capabilities of the banks listed. Given their ranking system, I would put USAA tied with #1, as it is completely free and has all the same capabilities.

Link: The top 10 online banks

Technorati Tags: ebanking, online banking, banking, banks, reviews, hsbc, wellsfargo, citibank, bankofamerica, etrade, huntington, firstnational, usbank, chase, wachovia

I didn’t expect to be happy

In fact, I was depressed for quite a while during the selection process. It really seemed like there was no bank in the world that could make me happy. I don’t think my requirements are all that crazy, I want it free, easy to use on and offline, and responsive to me. Yet 99% of all banks fail these few tests.

I had given up, but then I ran across The Ultimate USAA Thread at Fat Wallet. I was intrigued, I checked them out some more, I read their website, and I decided to give them my business.

USAA in a nutshell

The are located in San Antonio, Texas, USA. Most of their business is done online, and they are very good at that. Their online billpay is second-to-none in features. They are renown for their excellent customer service.

Their primary focus is military and military families. In fact, a casual read of their website would convince you that you must be in one of those classes to use them. That’s not true, anyone can be a member, simply call 1-800-531-2265 and ask for a member number.

In addition to normal bank offerings such as checking, savings, and loans, they also deal in auto/life/home insurance as well as investment services.

They are profitable ($100 million profit last year) and solid, and are rated one of the top 100 companies to work for in the U.S.

My experience joining

I called the number above. In 45 minutes, I had transferred $500 from my existing checking, splitting $475/$25 to my new checking and savings accounts. I had additionally applied for $1,000,000 term life insurance ($554/year for 20 years). I left the call with my checking and savings account numbers, a member number, and one-time passwords to get into the website.

I had to wait twice on hold, and not at all to get a CSR to start with. The waits were once while setting up the savings account and splitting the initial deposit, and another wait while my life insurance quote was being prepared. Each time, the CSR would make sure to break in every few minutes and tell me that all was OK and that they were working on the application.

I am very pleased to note that when they transferred me from banking to insurance, despite my account being minutes old, they did not need anything from me other than my member number. Contrast that with my experience calling Bank Of America, where every transfer starts with a multiple-question litany “name, social security, account number, birthday”.
Great customer service is in the details, and they had those details nailed down.

I look forward to many happy years as a USAA banking customer!

Technorati Tags: USAA, banking, checking

99% of all Banks Stink

I couldn’t possibly list every bank I rejected, since most of them stink like rotten fish.

• High maintenance fees. ETrade bank, Bank of America.
• Terrible web interfaces. Credit Unions.
• Crazy fees for online billpay. Credit Unions, Quicken Billpay ($9.95/mo? Seriously?)
• Terrible reputations for customer service. NetBank, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, Key.

Some don’t want my business

I would have chosen First Tech Credit Union, except I’m not eligible, since my company is not a “sponsor”. Too bad, since they have a great rep, good services, and low fees.

Despite the possibility of having inattention rewarded with maintenance fees, Bank of America would have won my business if it weren’t for the fact that their online signup form is broken. Nice going guys. The $50 account signup bonus almost got me, but I am very pleased that the bank apparently does not care about QA on their website. By failing for me, it drove me to seek a really good bank, not just one that is “almost enough”, which is really how I was feeling about them.

Technorati Tags: Bank of America, NetBank, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, Key Bank, NetBank, Quicken, Credit Unions, FirstTech, billpay, Etrade, checking, banking