Totally bewildered about how I set up a payment account to receive electronic deposits vs. paper checks which require a service fee monthly (?). I'm setting up my business by using an Excel spreadsheet, as was suggested in a post I found in this site. I was on a site signing up for a payment account and then saw everything I had to do in order to get the information necessary to pay me for the jobs. Is it me or are some of you newbies like me having a difficult time getting started? I know that it takes patience and a lot of work, but I want to do this the right way. Any suggestions/comments will be very much appreciated!

Thanks,
GZot36sy

For about 99% of your mystery shop payments you will need only three things.

1) PayPal address - Go to PayPal.com to set it up,
2) A bank account - you provide the routing number of your bank and account number of your account to the MSP, and
3) A mailbox - for paper checks.

Nearly all companies provide payments in one or more of these ways. Some offer only one option. Some allow you to choose from more than one option.
ACE is the only company that does things differently. It uses PayQuicker as their only payment method. Last I heard they were in the process of transitioning to another method.

As for fees, most companies deliver the payment without any fees. Expert Solutions (Stericycle) and a small number of MSPs deduct 3% from PayPal payments. But Expert Solutions also allows you to choose direct payment to a bank account that is done without a fee.

When you go to a company website to sign up, they will often ask for, and many times require payment information to start shopping. For those that mail paper checks it is easy to supply a mailing address. For PayPal payments it is just as easy to supply a PayPal email address after you set it up. Setting up a PayPal account is quickly done as well. Deposits to a bank account can be more time consuming in that some companies want a form faxed to them. Either way, this is a necessary part of setting up your business.

Hope that helps make it easy for you.

Have fun!

If you are talking about an accounting system to track payments, the spreadsheet contained in the new member section, or a version thereof, is a method used by most mystery shoppers to track payments.

I'm confused as to the bank account with a monthly service fee or a fee for depositing checks. You may need to shop around for a new bank. Most offer some option allowing for any fees to be waived. You definitely don't want to get caught up in a situation where you are paying per deposit.

This is no longer true. ACE stopped using PayQuicker several months ago and now offers Direct Deposit using Dwolla, which is an online payment system created by a the Veridian Credit Union. I have not had any problems at all with Dwolla.

Ath Power (for several years) and Sentry Marketing (very recently) have been using Direct Deposit using Bill.com and my experience with payment processed by Bill.com for Ath Power has been great.

@vlade5394 wrote:

Nearly all companies provide payments in one or more of these ways. Some offer only one option. Some allow you to choose from more than one option.
ACE is the only company that does things differently. It uses PayQuicker as their only payment method. Last I heard they were in the process of transitioning to another method.

Vlade5394,

Thank you so much for your comments. I am using the Excel spreadsheet in my business as a way of documenting all info for tax purposes. I do have a Pay Pal account and this seems like the easiest way to get paid without a lot of grey areas as I found when I was looking at bill.com's site. I'll have to send an email back to their support person (bill.com) regarding all the questions she was asking of me. I'll have to end my comment now but will be back with more information on this subject later. Again, thank you to everyone who's giving me their input. It's much needed!

myst4au:

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I 'm trying to understand bill.com. Must I use them in order to get paid if I work for the two companies who use bill.com? The support person at bill.com sent me an email of two different "situations" in which to use bill.com. If I expect to receive payments from an existing bill.com customer then the payments to me would not cost me anything. They would be able to send me an invitation to set up a free receivables account at bill.com to which I could receive payments electronically to my bank. If I expect to receive payment from a company who does not have a bill.com account then i would have to set up a paid account to invoice my customers, My customers then have the option to pay me through a free portal account they set up.
I'm trying to keep things simple as I start out my business. I'd be a happy camper if all I had to use was Pay Pal in order to get paid. I hope you understand how I explained this but as you can tell, i am pretty confused. You have used bill.com you mentioned and have had good success with them. I guess one way to get around it is just to not apply for jobs that use bill.com! Any advise/suggestions you can offer will really help me. Thanks.

myst4au wrote:
Ath Power (for several years) and Sentry Marketing (very recently) have been using Direct Deposit using Bill.com and my experience with payment processed by Bill.com for Ath Power has been great.

Just apply for shops with Ath Power and complete them, and they will initiate the process of paying you with Bill.com - it is really simple. Don't start with Bill.com - that is what some people seem to be doing with the recent switch by Sentry Marketing and all it seems to do for them is to really gum up the works. Sign up and complete shops for Ath Power and all will be well. I have had friends do this, and it just works. Trust me.

myst4au,

Thank you so much for your quick reply! I live in California and have never seen a job for Ath Power - this is strictly on the East coast? The problem began when I had to register with the two companies that Sentry Marketing uses for job postings. In the midst of following their guidelines for registration I was directed to bill.com. After the information overload I didn't know what to make of it all. So guess I should just try and go with other companies that don't push setting up bill.com on my end first and see what happens. Thanks again.

If you look at previous discussions about shoppers' favorite methods of payment you will find that there is a strong preference for direct deposit. If you don't currently have a bank account with no monthly fees, I would strongly advise you get one. PayPal tends to be the next favorite and many/most of us have PayPal transfer to our bank account. Paper checks, especially with a couple of companies, seem to have an annoying 'habit' of getting lost in the Post Office. Strong reason to believe they are being 'lost' at the MSP rather than at the Post Office. But there are some very reliable companies that pay by check. I personally will not do business with companies that want me to use bill.com or PayQuicker or any other little quirky method of payment. While it might cost them a little less to do it that way, I don't need the hassle, I need my payment when it was due and telling me that I can find it waiting for me under the 6th rock due East of Old Faithful is not an answer. It is getting easier and easier to directly send money and most financially sound companies should have the capability of doing direct deposit or sending out checks.

Because our payments do come from different sources, I have everything eventually go into one bank account, whether it is a check, a direct deposit or a PayPal transfer. That gives me a really clean record where what goes into that bank account is either my social security check or a mystery shopping payment. Little stuff like rebates or checks unrelated to mystery shopping all go to a second bank so they are not part my 'income' picture.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2015 03:49AM by Flash.

Flash,

I really appreciate your quick response to my post about payment accounts for MS. You are clearly very organized with your business. I like the idea of having that separate account for the MS payments. It's an excellent way of seeing what your income is strictly from MS. You know I feel the same way as you after learning about bill.com account. I'm really focused on going about this the right way and don't need any distractions to deter me from my goal of being successful in this business. Thank you for your honesty as well. I'm new to this business and so happy I joined this forum which enables me to get a
better picture of the MS business from all the success stories of experienced shoppers like yourself!

Ah, one more question just came up that I have read and wondered about. Do I need to file a W-9 with the IRS for my business?

Thanks again!

I haven't the foggiest where or why you would think you need to file a W-9 with IRS. As an independent contractor you will be reporting your income and expenses from mystery shopping on a Schedule C as part of your personal tax return. You can choose whether or not you wish to apply for an EIN (Employee Identification Number), which you can get on line for free and is wanted by SOME companies but also refused by some companies. Before you decide to get an EIN do make some inquiries with your local government about running a business out of your home as an independent contractor with no employees or customers coming to the house. In my area it doesn't matter whether there are employees or customers or not. As soon as you get an EIN for anything other than Estate they want to do occupancy tax, business tax, get a sales tax number and have me file quarterly sales tax reports. Easier for me just not to work with those companies that demand an EIN.

@vlade5394 wrote:

For about 99% of your mystery shop payments you will need only three things.

1) PayPal address - Go to PayPal.com to set it up,
2) A bank account - you provide the routing number of your bank and account number of your account to the MSP, and
3) A mailbox - for paper checks.

I agree with this post but I would like to elaborate a bit.

1) When setting up a PayPal account, it is best to create a brand new one (if you already have one) just for your MS'ing business. It can also be for merchandising, online surveys, focus groups, etc. Basically your secondary income if you have a "regular" job.

2) For Direct Deposit, I highly recommend opening a new checking account strictly for your MS'ing business. Try to find a bank shop that will pay you for opening a new account. Opening a separate checking account was one of the best decisions that I made when I first started this biz. It is best to NOT co-mingle your funds.

3) I use a PO Box for my mailing address. I seem to get my paychecks a day or two quicker (less travel time.) Once again, I do not like to mix business with pleasure or MS'ing with real life.

Bill.com.

Sounds like another thing I don't want to have pushed on to me.

I like the idea of a PO Box for MS checks. On occasion there seems to be a rash of thefts from mailboxes. Then there was the time a large check was delivered to the wrong address on a Saturday. Instead of bringing it to the door on finding my mailbox empty, my "nice" neighbor stuck it in the mailbox where it sat until Monday afternoon. And by nice I mean a-hole

I currently still have a PO Box and found that companies wanted a street address to send checks to. Meanwhile fewer and fewer companies mail checks, and the thief in my neighborhood has been incarcerated and the vacant house where he was squatting has been demolished, so that issue is gone. Meanwhile the cost of the smallest PO box has gone up to $66 per year so I am slowly changing all addresses to street address to get rid of the box at the end of the year. I believe when I first got the box it was $25 per year.

Neighbors suck! Nosy neighbors suck even more!

I didn't realize PO boxes had gotten so expensive. In my case it is actually one particular company whose checks make me nervous. An ongoing monthly project where the minimum is usually about $300 and can often be in the $1,200 to $1,500 range. Since they regularly send me either UPS or FedEX shipments I don't know if two different addresses will work. It might behoove me to find out.

UPS, FedEx, and other competitors do not deliver to USPS boxes.

I have no idea how much a UPS Store mailbox might cost but it might be worth investigating as it is a street address box that both UPS and USPS can deliver to. The UPS site simply suggest you check with your neighborhood UPS Store.

Recently, my new mail lady sent back some checks because of an issue with my mailbox. The MS company offered me Bill,Com when they were returned. It was not difficult to sign up for the service. Also, I shop for a MS company that uses pay pal except when checks are over $500. This makes me so nervous as I wait for my pay checks to arrive. I wish there was an alternative pay method. ,

@Flash wrote:

I haven't the foggiest where or why you would think you need to file a W-9 with IRS. As an independent contractor you will be reporting your income and expenses from mystery shopping on a Schedule C as part of your personal tax return. You can choose whether or not you wish to apply for an EIN (Employee Identification Number), which you can get on line for free and is wanted by SOME companies but also refused by some companies. Before you decide to get an EIN do make some inquiries with your local government about running a business out of your home as an independent contractor with no employees or customers coming to the house. In my area it doesn't matter whether there are employees or customers or not. As soon as you get an EIN for anything other than Estate they want to do occupancy tax, business tax, get a sales tax number and have me file quarterly sales tax reports. Easier for me just not to work with those companies that demand an EIN.

Flash,

Thanks for the heads-up on the W-9. As I mentioned, I read it somewhere in doing research on MS, but I'll use the schedule c when filing taxes. I don't plan on getting an EIN for the business either due to your comments. Thanks again for your input as well as everyone else's recently. It's great to get back all this feedback.

From what I have read in several places, the majority of communities zoned 'residential' in the US specifically prohibit operating a business out of the home with exclusions perhaps for in-home child care, which is licensed under different, usually state I think, supervision. Thus in reality, a novelist, a mystery shopper, an eBayer or likely even a telecommuter are all illegal activities in the home. There is a lot of winking and nodding that goes on because if the neighbors don't complain (like because of lots of barking dogs at a doggie day care in the home), home based businesses are ignored because they are too small a contributor to local revenues.

@Flash wrote:

I have no idea how much a UPS Store mailbox might cost but it might be worth investigating as it is a street address box that both UPS and USPS can deliver to. The UPS site simply suggest you check with your neighborhood UPS Store.

In my area $100-$200 a year. I think they vary by location. Call or visit your local store for details.

@Flash wrote:

I have no idea how much a UPS Store mailbox might cost but it might be worth investigating as it is a street address box that both UPS and USPS can deliver to. The UPS site simply suggest you check with your neighborhood UPS Store.

When I was traveling for business all the time, I didn't want my mail sitting around until tI returned home. I got a UPS Store box. I am now paying $54/quarter and I'm thinking about closing the box.