Last week I was down in New Canaan, CT, visiting my friend Greg. I took a walk at lunchtime one day, stopping by a little restaurant in town to grab a salad and bring it back to the house.

When I went to pay, I handed my debit card to the girl behind the counter. Instead of taking it, she said, “Sorry, our credit card machine is broken. It happens all the time. You can pay next time; just sign the receipt and give us your phone number.”

I told her that I live in Boston and it would be a least a week before I returned (she said that was fine). Then, being unable to keep my RocketGirl brain under wraps, I asked whether a frequently broken credit card machine cost the restaurant a lot of money.

“Not really,” she said. But I wondered.

What do they do with all those receipts and phone numbers, anyway? I mean, it’s nice that they trust me to return (I went back and paid the next week) but, human nature being what it is, I’m sure many people just forget about it and never settle up. There’s the potential for a lot of free food to go out the door.

I started thinking about how easy it would be to fix this problem with the right equipment and the right credit card processor. And, even though credit card processing might seem mysterious, it’s really pretty straightforward when you know the basics:

1. The Payments. In order to accept credit cards you’ll need a “Merchant Account.”

To get one, you need to apply with a credit card processing company. They’ll ask you a bunch of questions about your business and the size, frequency and type of transactions you expect. Nothing too complicated, along the lines of applying for a car loan.

Credit card processing companies are everywhere these days, at your bank, Costco, and plenty of independent companies (including my favorite, PowerPay).

2. The Equipment. Once you have your merchant account, you’re ready to set it up and start processing those transactions!

If you’re using a physical cash register, you’ll need to integrate it with your merchant account, using either a separate credit card terminal or your Point of Sale system (POS). Your credit card processor can help you set this up.

If you want to link a “buy” button on your website to your merchant account, then you need to have a shopping cart application and payment gateway. Authorize.net is my favorite payment gateway because it’s reliable and integrates with almost every shopping cart. Your website developer can help you to get this going.

3. The Bank. At the close of each day, your credit card processing company will run “a batch.” This is when the cards that were authorized that day are actually charged.

You’ll want to reconcile your batch reports to your bank statements to make sure they match. Often the transaction and processing fees are taken out at this point, so you’ll need to account for them as well to make sure things add up.

Visa, MasterCard and Discover usually take two business days to deposit the money into your account; AmEx takes three.

4. The Price. Fees for merchant accounts vary based on a number of criteria, including whether or not you’re swiping the physical card (higher fees, if not) and the number of transactions processed.

In general, though, the three things you want to pay attention to when comparing vendors are:

• • The monthly fee. Even if you have zero transactions in a month, you’ll usually pay a flat monthly fee.
  • The percentage of each sale charged, which is a function of the size of the transaction.
  • The flat fee for each transaction.

5. The Company. While price is important, make sure that you also like the company you’re dealing with. This is an important relationship in your business life; they’re going to be handling the flow of your money.

Make sure they have all the reports that you’ll need available online. Make sure you have an assigned rep to your account (not just an 800 number), and make sure they’re familiar with your particular cash register system and/or shopping cart.

That’s about it! Like I told you, pretty simple stuff.

But…none of that means anything if your machine (or any of these other essential pieces) is broken, offline, unreliable or anything else that keeps you from simply and consistently charging customers.

That’s it for today – I’m off to pick up another salad. I wonder if I’ll be getting it for free?

Last month I moved into a new apartment, two blocks from Coolidge Corner in beautiful Brookline, MA. With that apartment came two keys, one for my unit and one for the front door of the building itself.

The keys look identical. And so, when I first moved in, Cynthia the property manager put a yellow sticker on one (my unit) and a blue sticker on the other (the building). Problem solved.

Within a few weeks, however, both stickers had fallen off and I no longer knew which key was for which door. I tried to remember their order on the key ring, but I have to admit that I had trouble keeping it straight.

Many times I had to try both keys (in both doors) as I came and went. It wasn’t a huge problem-in fact, I immediately forgot about it once I was home-but it sure was persistent. Finally, yesterday, I dropped a dab of red nail polish on the unit key and my problem has disappeared for good!

Believe it or not, I see people “suffering” in their businesses with these kinds of issues every day. Little things nag at them, over and over and over again-the kinds of things that are large enough to be annoying, but too small to get fixed.

This past Tuesday, for example, I was sitting with my client Steve at his desk. We were working on setting up his accounting software and I needed to connect the program to his online banking account. I asked him to enter his username and password.

There was a blank stare, followed by, “Oh yeah” as he entered the info. It didn’t work. Steve rifled through his desk for a notebook that contained his passwords. Then he said, “I think I changed this but I’m pretty sure I didn’t write it down.” Next, he clicked the “forgot password” link on the bank’s website and we waited for the “reset your password” email to arrive into his inbox.

You get the idea.

When I asked him why he didn’t have a system to manage his passwords he said, “It’s not that big of a pain and I don’t want to take the time to figure out something better.”

As with my keys, it was large enough to be annoying but too small to get fixed.

But it’s more than just annoying. By tolerating inefficiencies in our workday-over and over, day after day-we lose hours of time that could be spent in other, more productive ways.

The solution is simple: Fix the small inefficiencies in your business (and life) that you are tolerating. They are getting in the way and, particularly as a small business owner, you can’t afford the wasted time and energy. In order to succeed, you need to continually improve the way your work gets done.

Keep in mind, by the way, that solving these little problems and streamlining your life is not about “teching” up your business for the sake of technology. It’s about leveraging your time so that you can get more done, work less hard, and maybe even take a day off once in a while.

The answer to my problem? Red nail polish on the key. The answer to Steve’s? Click here.