This document outlines the current statement analysis process as it stands today, 12/13/23. This process applies to Rain Retail and its subsidiaries, as well as TAKU/ACE- although there are some slight variations which are outlined below.
A demo recording of this process can be found here.
Rain and its subsidiaries operate our primarily out of Salesforce (SFDC). The process to submit statements varies slightly by team and is outlined below.
When the sales team is working on a deal and the need for custom rates is identified, the AE will work on collecting statements. Best practices and instructions on how to submit a statement analysis can be found here. Once statements are collected from the merchant, the AE will upload them into SFDC and the case will automatically be assigned to Ty Clement. An email notification will alert him that a new case has been assigned.
Open cases can be found in the Statement Analysis Cases report.
Occasionally a merchant may sign up with one rate but then decide they want to negotiate them after the sale. If this occurs, the CSM or Support rep is responsible for collecting the statements from the merchant and sending it to Cora Gadd. She will then ensure it meets our standards as outlined here and submit the case which follows the same flow listed above.
Additionally merchants may want to renegotiate rates with us after 6-12 months. If this happens, no statements are collected from the merchant since we can find their sales history in the Payment Portal. For these cases, we look at the last 3-6 months of sales volume from the Payouts Report and determine if we can lower their rates.
Since TAKU/ACE doesn’t use SFDC and can’t submit tickets, their process is slightly different. Don Kang uses ISO Amp to analyze statements for all US accounts while, due to the added complexity, Ty Clement analyses statements for all CA accounts. To complicate matters more, some TAKU/ACE accounts are in Rain’s SFDC instance and getting worked by Rain AE’s while others are in TAKU’s Hubspot account and getting worked by TAKU’s AE Leila. If a Rain AE is working the deal, they will submit the case as described above. If Leila/TAKU’s AEs are working a deal then they will email the statements.
ISO Amp is an AI tool we use to analysis merchant statements and give a cost breakdown. This accomplishes most of the time consuming work of reviewing statements but has some limitations:
Due to those three considerations, approximately >50% of the statements analyzed today need to be done through Excel. With that said, the time it does save is well worth the small cost.
A simple tool has been built in Excel to help analyze statements quickly and efficiently. On the ‘Statements’ tab, basic details about the account are filled out such as:
Once the merchant’s details are filled out, the Total Card Volume, Monthly Transaction Count, and Total Fees are entered for each month provided. If the merchant is in Canada then the Interac Direct Debit and Interac Flash fields are filled out as well.
For multi-location accounts, the fields on the right can be used to sum each location for the various months of statements before being copied over the section above.
At the bottom of the sheet, all the data is averaged out and summarized. On the right-hand side, you’ll see two numbers. #1 is the median of the data entered and #2 is the average. Depending on each situation one or the other may be more applicable. Copy the row and paste at the bottom of the Margins tab.
The blue section should be the information you copied from the previous tab. The ‘New Variable Rate’ and ‘New Auth Fee’ sections will be what you need to fill out. See the Expectations, KPIs, and Pricing Strategy section for more details on how to price merchants.
The instructions for using ISO Amp, can be found here.
Once the new rates have been determined, they must be entered into SFDC. To do so, find the open case in the Statement Analysis Cases report and fill out the appropriate fields. Each of the fields in the screenshot below should be filled out.
<aside> 💡 Note: The GPV field is used to calculate commission and should be as specific as possible down to the dollar.
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Once the data has been entered, the price proposal needs to be filled out and uploaded. At the top-right hand corner of the SFDC case, go to Attachments > View All > Upload Files to upload the completed proposal. It should look like the following below:
To complete the case, the ‘Case Owner’ should be assigned back to the person who created it and the status should be changed to ‘Solved’.
Submitting statements for TAKU/ACE is much simpler than with Rain although we have a lot less information we can report on which makes data accuracy more difficult.
To submit statements, go here and Accept the terms for either US or CA. Then fill out the form and hit Submit. It will have you fill out your name and email and then send you an email confirmation which you’ll need to click in order for it to go through. Once you confirm the email, it will send you a copy of the proposal via email and do some Hubspot magic behind the scenes that will notify the AE.
All brands have branded price proposals that need to be filled out, saved on the computer, and attached to the case. Those can be found here.
<aside> 💡 Note: It’s important to use the right brand and the right country. Refer to the ‘Brand’ field on the case to determine which branded proposal should be used.
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There are four primary processors you’ll see in Canada. Outside of these four, it’s very rare to see any others. Canadian statements are very similar to US statements except that they include a different payment method called Interac which is similar to pin debit in the US. When analyzing Canadian statements, the Interac volume and fees need to be subtracted from the totals so if a merchant had $70,000 in total sales with $15,000 of it being Interac, then for the Total Card Volume, the total would be $55,000 and the Interac Volume would be $15,000. Same goes for the fees.
These processors are listed below in order of frequency with links to example statements showing where to find the Interac numbers:
Moneris lists out Interac on Page 1 usually so that should be deducted from the total. The Interac fees are listed on Page 4 with the total fees usually being on the same page or on Page 5.
Chase lists out Interac on Page 2 usually so that should be deducted from the total. The Interac fees are listed on Page 3 with the total fees usually being on the same page or on Page 4.
Global statements are the worst on the planet, ever, for all time.
Total sales is usually on Page 2 but they don’t list the payment methods so you have to go down to Page 5 to find the Interac volume and fees. Then the total fees can be found on Page 5 or 6.
TD lists out Interac on Page 3 but they don’t sum up the total volume anywhere so you have to manually add up each card brand. The Interac fees are listed on Page 2 with the total fees usually being on the same page or on Page 3.
Due to the different processes and requirements for each team, the needs for each vary slightly. Depending on the influx of cases, statements generally get done in batches during one of three timeslots: early morning, late afternoon, evening. It usually makes the most sense to do wait and do them in batches, if possible, rather than being constantly interrupted to do one at a time.
Sometimes an AE will mark the status of a case with a Priority of ‘Urgent’. If this happens, the case should be returned within the hour if possible. If an AE abuses this status, the AE team lead should be spoken with to help identify the reasons for such frequent need of urgent cases.
Jeremy has been very clear with each team that pricing on payments should not be an obstacle in closing a new deal. For this reason, we should always match the current rates so long as the statements provided are within the last 3 months- even at the risk of potentially losing money. We can always reprice them later if needed.
<aside> 💡 ⚠️ Approval is needed by Biju Nair for any potential proposal under 2% effective rate. Slack him the details using the following template and include the statement being analyzed:
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__ Locations Brand (Sales team [Upgrade, Migration, New]) Total GPV: $__ Avg Txn: $__ Effective Rate: _.% Planning on offering _.%
We should always aim to match the merchant’s current effective rates. If those rates are lower than our defaults then we strive to match those. The same rule applies to merchants who have rates higher than our defaults. We should price-match rates in that scenario as well.
Sometimes we price-match a merchant but they still may not be satisfied. While AE’s are commissioned off our margins, they still are primarily focused on just closing the deal and not necessarily on delivering the best margins. For this reason, if an AE comes back and wants to get the rates lowered even further then the following template should be sent to their team lead who can use their discretion to work with the AE in coming up with the best strategy for that merchant:
Occasionally a merchant wants to see how our rates would compare to what they would have paid with their current processor previously. When this is requested, a simple template has been made in Excel to provide a month over month view of what they would have paid with their last processor and what they would have paid with us. Once the file has been filled out, it can be saved and sent back to the AE.
Those templates for the US and CA can be found here.
