Where To Find Extra Money? 節流其實就是開源

As an accountant, I’m often asked by my clients (corporate & individuals alike) how they could make more money. One of the many things I usually recommend them doing was to review their credit card statements. This seems to be a no-brainer. But you will be surprised by how many people and even corporations don’t do this diligently enough. For some of my corporate clients, reviewing the credit card statements may actually make them substantial amount of money because of their vast transaction volumes and the significant dollar amount involved. It’s because the bookkeepers or accounts payable department often robotically pay for the bank charges, late fees or any charges that are accessed by the banks or the credit card companies in bulk processing without spending much time reviewing them. But if they do, they may realize many of these late fees, interest charges on the credit cards can be waived, simply by calling the credit card companies.

Late fees and interest charges are always assessed on a credit card when payment is even one minute past the due date. Very often, such fees are triggered because the automatic schedule of payment is bumped a day after the due date when the due date is a Sunday or any non-business day that is observed by that specific credit card. In other circumstances when my clients were engaging in extremely tight cash flows management, they simply missed the hour of making the due date because of internet interruption, electric blackout, other technical problems or just human operating problems or errors. Anyhow, such charges can often be reversed by the credit card companies if my clients simply call and kindly request for the reversal. That can happen of course only when they actually review the credit card statements and when they care enough to actually make the phone calls, instead of simply accepting such “legitimate” charges as the regular expense that must simply be paid up.