Brand new member and business owner

[nathanas]

Hi everyone. Brand new member here and I feel fairly silly that I haven't investigated this earlier. I'm a small business owner, convenience store, and I have several suppliers I can pay by credit card. I've started investigating them and so far they all incur a 1% fee on an invoice. My question is, is there a card I should be looking at which the positives of the points earning will outweigh the negatives? Any help greatly appreciated!

 

[deka2]

First of all welcome nathanas, there is much to learn on this site

whilst no expert it would help if you expanded on your situation.

Potential $ per month on credit card

Do you have status with any airline.

Do you have any frequent flyer points already

Do you have an airline preference flying

 

[nathanas]

First of all welcome nathanas, there is much to learn on this site

whilst no expert it would help if you expanded on your situation.

Potential $ per month on credit card

Do you have status with any airline.

Do you have any frequent flyer points already

Do you have an airline preference flying

thanks for the detailed response deka.

1. Potentially could spend $28k on one supplier alone per month. Much more could be spent if I used it for others.
2. No airline status.
3. No frequent flyer points.
4. No airline preference

 

[TomVexille]

Welcome aboard!

 

[Deleted member]

welcome aboard, it strikes me you have one half of the equation sorted (points accumulation) the next bit is status. the two main (domestic) options are VA and QF.
depending upon your domestic situation and travel habits you may decide theta VA with family pooling suits you best. vs (like me) QF for its connection with EK and One world is a better option.
It doesn't hurt to join both anyway. you can then decide upon which card / cards you want to use (or apply for ) to maximize your points earn. look out for sign up bonus's and the like. but more importantly, trawl the site for ideas and suggestions, and ask lots of questions.

 

[nathanas]

Thanks gph. Forgot to mention it's just my wife and I in the family and I suppose we'd like to use points for international travel mainly. Cheers!

 

[deka2]

Most of the credit cards are broken up into the Qantas points earn or other airlines ( most notably Singapore, Cathay, Virgin)

So your first decision is which camp tpo start off with you want to be in.

There are pros and cons for each.

If your suppliers take Amex then I would look at the ANZ Black, which has a bonus sign on at the moment.

This comes in both qantas and others, as does the westpac black.

At the upper end of the Amex scale is the Paltinum chargecard, which has a high income requirement , many benefits but a $1200 yearly cost

If Visa/ mastercard is what they take then Citibank have a signature and Prestige, which also come in both flavours.

Bankwest Platinum is also good, but only earns Qantas points

One of the problems you may have to start out is the credit limit you receive.

If your monthly spend is higher then that limit you will have to have the funds to load your Credit Card

IMO I you should start slowly.

Get one or two cards and start spending.

Have an aim for a trip

With any redemption in either J or F you are going to have to book a long way ahead, even up to 353 days out to get what you want.

There's a lot to learn and it will take time.

Spend time looking at the various threads that will help you.

 

[andye]

Hi everyone. Brand new member here and I feel fairly silly that I haven't investigated this earlier. I'm a small business owner, convenience store, and I have several suppliers I can pay by credit card. I've started investigating them and so far they all incur a 1% fee on an invoice. My question is, is there a card I should be looking at which the positives of the points earning will outweigh the negatives? Any help greatly appreciated!

As long as you have good cash-flow, a (presumably tax-deductible) surcharge of 1% will work for many credit cards.
There is also the potential to pay your taxes by credit card (though the number of cards that let you do this are decreasing fast)

However, don't spend time chasing points that you would otherwise use developing your business-use your leisure time for AFF

 

[nathanas]

Have two suppliers that take Amex so far. Coke takes Amex and only charge 1%. Frucor take Amex but it's a 2.5% charge. Those two combined would be an average $3k spend a month where as all other suppliers are 1% charge for visa/MasterCard and don't take Amex. The tobacco would be my big earner. $15k a week and I have the money there to pay for it straight away, pay on credit, transfer money straight over to credit card.

 

[nathanas]

As long as you have good cash-flow, a (presumably tax-deductible) surcharge of 1% will work for many credit cards.
There is also the potential to pay your taxes by credit card (though the number of cards that let you do this are decreasing fast)

However, don't spend time chasing points that you would otherwise use developing your business-use your leisure time for AFF

Cash flow is not a problem. Working account is always healthy and ready to pay for invoices.

 

[nathanas]

Cash flow is not a problem. Working account is always healthy and ready to pay for invoices.

Edit. I suppose I should ask about points conversion also. I had it in my mind that I'd get a card that I didn't have to convert, ie. $1 = 1 ff point.

 

[RooFlyer]

Edit. I suppose I should ask about points conversion also. I had it in my mind that I'd get a card that I didn't have to convert, ie. $1 = 1 ff point.

I would think that it would be unnecessarily restrictive to have an 'automatic sweep' type card. I have CBA Platinum Business cards (MCard and Amex) which earns as their own points and I can either 'sign up' to convert always to QFF or leave them there until I'm ready to batch convert to Velocity and then to SQ. Flight Centre options as well, but I wouldn't consider that. CBA Personal Diamond cards have great point earning capacity. I also have AMEX Plat charge card, which has terrific converting options to a range of airlines.

But I would like to mention the difficulty you may have in converting your points into seats on planes to places you want to go. Not to put you off, but to get you ready to face reality.

'Award' seats in J or F cabins are scarce on just about every airline, and especially on 'popular' routes (from Australia) such as OZ-USA or OZ-UK. Pax with 'status' (ie a lot of paid flights) are way in front when it comes to getting those scarce seats. You won't have status (I assume), so will have to plan well ahead if you want to redeem J or F (and people do, quite successfully). if its whY, then its easier, but you still need to be sharp in your quest.

As some-one up-thread said, think about who you want to fly with (where will you want to fly?) before you choose your points program.

Good luck!

 

[nathanas]

'Award' seats in J or F cabins are scarce on just about every airline, and especially on 'popular' routes (from Australia) such as OZ-USA or OZ-UK. Pax with 'status' (ie a lot of paid flights) are way in front when it comes to getting those scarce seats. You won't have status (I assume), so will have to plan well ahead if you want to redeem J or F (and people do, quite successfully). if its whY, then its easier, but you still need to be sharp in your quest.

As some-one up-thread said, think about who you want to fly with (where will you want to fly?) before you choose your points program.

Good luck!

Thanks roo! We would be mostly doing Europe and USA/Canada. Can you please explain j and f? I did read using the points for premium seating is often better?

 

[RooFlyer]

There are maybe 2 business class seats (J#) and, I don't know .. 1? First class (F#) seat allocated for points redemption on Qantas international flights, I believe. Others may correct me on the numbers, but its not many, considering the demand! Anyone can request extra seats to be released to them, but only those with status (Plat, Plat1 and Chairman's lounge) have a reasonable chance of that being allowed by Qantas.

Yes, Business and First redemptions are a good way to spend points, mainly because with all Award seats, Qantas charges high cash 'fuel fines' and other charges so if you are happy to fly economy, its often almost as much to buy a sale economy seat than redeeming points and paying the cash charges. You still pay these with J and F redemptions, but you get more bang for your buck!

Programs are always changing, but some airlines, such as American and United have much lower cash charges with their points ('miles') seats.

Australia and the world is awash in FF points. People who never fly in a 'revenue' seat can accumulate millions of QFF points and they are after the same few seats per flight as you may be (and me!)

I have been a long time Qantas flyer, and still am, but I fly much less with them now (maintain Platinum via client paid J flights to Nth America), and I have steered my credit cards towards Velocity points earning (where I am a lowly Silver) and I push them through to Singapore Krisflyer. From there, I get access to the Star Alliance network, which I also have via my membership of Air Canada Aeroplan (that's NOT such a good program!). So I cover many bases.

If you look as though you might be earning a lot of points, why not get a card that earns direct or indirect on Qantas, and one that earns on Virgin - the latter either to fly Virgin, or one of its many partners.

You are way ahead of most by coming here - there are ways to improve your chances (I don't know half the tips!). Trawl a few threads to get into the lingo and ID the issues, then keep asking away

# Award seats in business aren't given the 'J' symbol nor first 'F' but some other letters, which I can never remember.

 

[nathanas]

Ok so home from work and more investigating. I really need some help understanding the ins and outs of this game! I've just looked at a business class flight to Frankfurt and it comes in at over $8k return.
I've looked at the points, Qantas at 280k for return.
Now to get to 280k points I'd need 17.5 weeks with a 2 points per $1 card. $8k tobacco order for 16k points reward. I know it can't be this simple as that would only cost me $1400 in credit card fees.

 

[RooFlyer]

Sure; as mentioned, getting points is relatively easy. Its getting an Awards seat that might be the problem; and two on the same flight is twice as hard . And I don't think you discovered the cash cost of your Qantas business points seat. But keep reading around the various threads and you'll get on top of it and jetting around in the pointy end sooner than later.

 

[nathanas]

Yep. Just throughly re read your post roo. What airline would you say has the best allocation for awards seats?

oh also, how do I discover the cash cost of the business points seat?

 

[RooFlyer]

The first is the 'zinger' question. If I knew, do you think I would say ? :mrgreen: . Seriously, almost impossible to know. People around here have their 'favourite' airlines and, importantly, routes that they like to redeem on, but the availability of Award seats is not necessarily fixed; an airline might quietly withdraw reward seats if their regular ("revenue") bookings are heavy for that flight.

if you earn Qantas points, then that gets you access to all OneWorld Airlines' Award seats and also Emirates ; you book them through the Qantas site. I've never tried myself but you should be able to go via HKG on Cathay or a combination of QF, CX, AY and BA. Frankly its been years since I redeemed on Qantas so I'm a bit out of touch.

People also use the BA FF program/web site and/or the JAL FF program/website to search for Award seat availability across OneWorld, as the QF one isn't very good at it. Again, you'll have to take time and absorb all this through the threads here. Also have a look at the AFF 'Knowledge Centre'. Again, don't use it myself but you pay a bit and get a distillation of knowledge on certain subjects.

With Virgin, you get access to them and partners of which Etihad is notable in getting to Europe.

Have a look at threads involving Expert Flyer. I don't use it myself but its a (paid) tool that reveals exactly what seats in what classes are available on almost all flights.

Lastly., on this aspect, have a look at the American Airlines and even Alaskan Airlines FF programs. They allow you to 'buy miles' and a number of times a year they have bonus offers. EG Buy 70,000 miles and American might give you 35,000 bonus miles. The cost on AAdvantage is often about US2.2cents/mile. Then you book through the AA web site for AAward seats. They also have Etihad as a partner and going First on the A380 out of Sydney to DXB and onto LHR has been popular here. When the US$ and A$ were close, it was an absolute STEAL. Now with the A$ devaluation and AA about to jack up the number of miles required, its marginal. But if you have access to US$ its very much worth a look; wait for the bonus offers; go through the AA threads.

Alaskan isn't part of an alliance, so have many 'partners' so you can go a long way redeeming their miles for flights through them. Again, they have bonus offers and again, there are threads about AS here.

To know the cash cost of an award seat, you need to make a dummy booking, but I'm not sure if you lack the required points it will allow you to proceed. I had a quick look next April and could only find seats on Emirates via the Qantas site. Cost for J was $620 one way, one person in addition to the points. A pure Cathay flight via HKG in November was only $128 in cash extra (this surprised me). Qantas to LHR then BA to FRA in November add $744 one way to the points cost.

 

[nathanas]

Thanks so much roo. Lots of info. I'm trying to find a card that gives 2 points per $1 for either Qantas or velocity. Do these magical cards exist? If not I think I want to look at the best two cards for direct earn, or best earn and equivalent conversion rate to either ff or velocity points. Any suggestions?

 

[mooingchicken]

Thanks so much roo. Lots of info. I'm trying to find a card that gives 2 points per $1 for either Qantas or velocity. Do these magical cards exist? If not I think I want to look at the best two cards for direct earn, or best earn and equivalent conversion rate to either ff or velocity points. Any suggestions?

2 airline points per $1 doesnt really exist. ANZ black as previously mentioned are well as alot of other CBA, Amex direct, Citi etc generally all cap out at around 1.5 points per $1 on amex. and 1 for 1 on visa/mastercard. Virgin generally has two 15% transfer bonuses throughout the year. (one has just finished). You have the ability to earn a lot of points it seems, so you could always hedge your bets, earn both qantas and another airline if you wish.

Qantas is basically only direct sweep. whereas other airlines you can keep the points on the credit card (known as warehousing), and transfer when you want. pro's and con's to this, you can wait and transfer when they offer bonuses (ie virgin) or transfer to different airlines (Singapore, virgin, airmiles, Etihad etc) but they can chose to devaule the transfer rates (like citibank just tried to do) but they generally have to give notice of this.

Also different airlines charge different taxes. QF to europe might be $800 per person (never booked myself but think that's right from comments on here) Singapore would be similar i think, but singapore seem to have a lot more availability last minute and you can also waitlist. Virgin have very low taxes (maybe 200-300 odd to europe?) not sure about others.

Basically get a decent high end card and anything you earn on a 1% surcharge makes the points a pretty good deal.