#payments
Manage payment processing, tracking, and reconciliation efficiently
Regulation CC makes the first $275 of a check deposit available the next business day and most ordinary checks by the second, but six documented exceptions — including deposits above $6,725 — let a bank hold the balance until the seventh business day. Here are the schedules, the written-notice rights, and how to plan payroll around them.
Shift4 folded the $250-per-device Annual Program Fee and the $325-per-device Regulatory Assurance Fee (capped at $975) into one roughly $2,000 Annual Service and Maintenance Fee starting with August 2026 statements. Here is how to reconstruct your baseline, dispute it within the 30-day window, price the exit before switching, and book the charge as merchant account fees accrued at about $167 a month.
New York City's app-based delivery rules — a $22.13 hourly courier pay floor for pay periods beginning on or after April 1, 2026, tipping offered at checkout with a 10% suggested minimum, and weekly itemized payouts — change what a restaurant has to record. Book gross marketplace sales, itemize every platform fee, run tips through a liability account that ends at zero, and the January 1099-K reconciles itself.
Global Payments closed its $24.25 billion Worldpay acquisition in January 2026, and processor mergers routinely bring migration fees, contract reassignments, and quiet rate creep. Learn how to compute your effective rate (total fees ÷ card volume), the seven statement lines where costs hide, and a 15-minute quarterly audit that flags overpaying above 3%.
OpenTable now deducts 2% from no-show penalties, reservation deposits, and prepaid experiences, and lets U.S. restaurants absorb the fee or pass it to diners per cancellation policy. This guide shows how to book deposits at gross as a liability, expense the fee separately, run a six-step monthly payout reconciliation, and decide whether deposits still pay off after the fee.
A lockbox sends customer checks to a bank-run P.O. box where staff scan and deposit them the same day and return a remittance data file; remote deposit capture lets you scan checks at your own desk under the Check 21 Act. This guide compares the two for small businesses by check volume, customer geography and cost (setup, monthly and per-item lockbox fees versus a $5 to $40 per month scanner plan), and covers same-day posting to receivables, original-check retention, deposit cutoffs and positive pay.
Square raised its free-plan online card rate from 2.9% + 30¢ to 3.3% + 30¢ on January 13, 2026, and paid plans moved to 2.9% + 30¢. Compute the annual cost of the increase, find the new Square Plus break-even near $12,250 per month in online volume, and see when interchange-plus pricing beats a flat rate.
Under the Nacha Operating Rules, an ACH reversal corrects only a sender's qualifying error—a duplicate, wrong amount, wrong account, or qualifying wrong date—and must reach the receiving bank within five banking days of settlement. This guide explains how reversals differ from returns and R10/R11 unauthorized-debit claims, and how to record each event so payments stay reconcilable.
FedNow and the RTP network settle payments 24/7, so a bank balance can change before your books do. How to reconcile instant payments with a five-state payment lifecycle (approved, submitted, accepted, settled, returned), a clearing-account chart-of-accounts pattern, ISO 20022 identifiers worth preserving, and a 30-day rollout plan for small businesses.
Spain's B2B e-invoicing framework gives businesses with prior-year turnover above €8 million 12 months from the implementing ministerial order — and everyone else 24 months — to issue structured EN 16931 invoices and report acceptance and effective payment within four qualifying days. This checklist covers which deadline applies, how "paid" is defined, and how to build a receivables workflow that meets the window.
Niger's 2026 framework adds a 1% tax on qualifying cash payments above CFA 100,000 and a 0.5%/5% tax on deposits and inter-operator transfers. This guide shows small businesses how to map exposure, record the tax separately from the underlying transaction, and reconcile cash and mobile money daily.
QR-code phishing (quishing) can redirect a vendor payment or capture a customer's card by swapping one image. The defenses are ordinary bookkeeping controls—verify the vendor master, separate approval from payment release, and reconcile QR channels daily.
