What you get: a sample audit

Merchants ask what an audit actually produces. This page is a sample with invented figures for a fictional business — a real audit uses your real statement, shared only through a secure PCI-compliant channel (never this website, never email).

Example Café (fictional) — the starting point

Card volume: $46,800/mo · Average ticket: $19 · Processor: flat-rate aggregator · Total fees last statement: $1,596 → effective rate 3.41%.

What the audit found (sample findings)

• Small-ticket math: at a $19 average ticket, the per-transaction piece of flat-rate pricing adds ~0.79 points by itself — the single biggest cost driver.
• PCI non-compliance fee, $29.95/mo — the café was compliant; the SAQ had been filed with a previous processor and never transferred. Misfiling, billed monthly.
• Duplicate "regulatory program" charge, $14.95/mo — overlapping the PCI program fee already on the statement.
• Statement + batch fees totaling $21/mo — small, real-ish, and exactly the kind of lines that never get questioned.

The verdict (sample)

Estimated achievable range on an interchange-plus structure: 2.55–2.75% — an estimate based on this card mix, not a quote or a promise; underwriting and final pricing are the processing company's. At the sample volume, the midpoint implies roughly $310/mo in reduced fees — stated so you can see the arithmetic, not as a guarantee for any real business.

What you receive in a real audit

Your true effective rate; every questionable line named with its monthly cost; which fees are real pass-throughs nobody can remove (interchange, network assessments); and an honest recommendation — including "stay where you are" when the numbers say so. The findings are yours whether you switch or not.

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Sample prepared by Processing Signal for illustration. No real merchant's data appears on this page.