Thursday, March 31, 2016

The Many Services Of A Coupon Clearing House

By Walter Wilson


Companies, whether new or long established, need to occasionally go out of their way to attract business. With so much competition for consumer dollars, a product maker must decide if giving a discount will get them more sales. One of the most popular ways to give consumers a discount is to offer them coupons. A coupon clearing house helps both retailers who accept coupons and the manufacturers make the redemption of these coupons seamless.

Stores gladly accept coupons because they know it makes customers happy, and make them more likely to keep shopping at that location. They take the temporary loss, but then send in the coupons to be counted to a clearing house. This is much easier on both the manufacturers who issued it and the stores, since the clearing house does all the accounting work in one place.

Once they reach the clearinghouse, that business then goes through the task of sorting and counting all of them. They invoice each one and then add up the total of all of them. That is the amount owed. This is so much simpler than having to hire a special couponing staff who will separate and add these up. It is time saving as well, which is a big deal in the business world.

When the invoice is made, it includes the face value of all coupons mailed in, plus a handling fee for each one. The retailers have to pay postage and may have other fees associated with accepting coupons. This handling fee covers those costs to encourage the store to keep accepting them.

In addition to these services, the clearinghouse also works with the companies who printed the coupons in the first place. One of the most valuable services is data reports. These reports allow a business to see how many redemptions there have been, and how that affects overall sales. This lets a company see whether giving the discount is cost effective or not.

Audits are another service that allows manufacturers to see how their coupons are being used. A report of their redemption levels over several weeks or months can be compiled to look for any unusual circumstances or figures. This is meant to ensure there is no fraud going on and that all rules for redemption are being followed at the retailer level to avoid losing money.

Digital codes and coupons are a trend that has really picked up in recent years. There are many advantages, including using less paper and ink, helping the environment, and not having anything to mail in. A clearing house can make sure that these email, text and app codes work and are being redeemed properly.

In addition, a clearing house can look for fakes that some criminals make. They will take a real, scanning bar code and alter it so that it brings up a larger discount. This costs millions a year, but can be avoided with the services provided by a clearinghouse. Employees look at the actual physical piece of paper and look for unusual things that meant a fake. They then alert retailers so they can stop taking the coupons and stop the coupon fraud in its tracks.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment