The following chart shows the difference that a company can experience by introducing 10% growth through the use of barter sales to offset cash expenditures.  

When making a sale, you must charge the same price to BXI members that you charge your cash customers. You may not increase prices for a BXI sale. Sales tax is paid in cash. 

All sales to $1,500 must be at 100% BXI trade credits. For the portion of a transaction over $1,500 a percentage of cash may be negotiated. 

When negotiating a large purchase, the buyer should phone first and make an appointment with the owner as employees may not be authorized to accept or familiar with barter transactions. 

Membership fees vary by area.  Please use our request form for information regarding fees applicable to your business.

A monthly fee of $6.00 in cash and $6.00 in trade credits is charged to all members. This is the cost of maintaining your account on a monthly basis. 

A cash service fee equal to 10% of each purchase made with BXI trade credits is charged for each purchase made. This fee is based on the total monthly volume and charged monthly. 

The fee structure is established to make it possible for BXI to maintain offices throughout the country. There is never a fee assessed when you sell products or services to other BXI members. The transaction fee is charged only when you spend your trade credits. This means as a company, BXI only earns money when you are spending your trade credits to get the things that you want. 

BXI accounts for all trade transactions. Each month you will receive a detailed monthly statement indicating all trade credits earned and expenses to your account. This system makes it very easy to verify your account balance and to account for all trade activity at the end of the year. 

One of the terrific advantages of bartering is that traders expect to pay the full retail price of the product or service they are buying. Barter is a supplemental currency, in which cash is always king, however, through the use of barter, business deals can still be consummated. 

Because barter currently (trade credits) can not purchase all items in the marketplace, traders expect to pay the full retail value when negotiating a barter purchase. This is due to several factors. Most businesses have a direct cost factor in their product. If a wholesale or discounted price was to be negotiated, the margin of profit would be minimal in comparison to the amount invested in the product to date. When a company needs to liquidate items for emergency needs, the only justification of lowering prices to the bone would be the infusion of cash. Barter does not result in immediate cash, so it would not be practical to expect a business to liquidate for trade credits. Therefore, the barter industry has been set-up to deal on a retail price level, which means that if a company has surplus goods or discontinued merchandise, there would be no need to mark down this merchandise. Rather, this would prove to be a high profit maker. 

By trading on a retail level, traders are able to realize much higher profit margins through the user of barter than through any other program. This represents high buying power when a company is looking to spend their barter credits on items that would then reduce the amount of cash expenditures. 

Another vehicle for creating profits, is the use of Script (gift certificates). When a company is well established, the ability to write a large amount of script and then sell it into the marketplace gives a business the opportunity to create profits immediately and offset larger expenses at the same time. For additional information on script, consult your local BXI Area Director. 

There are many businesses that naturally attract the opportunity to trade. Publications and media are among the most likely to be offered trade for advertising. In most cases, publications either get stuck holding a lot of trade certificates that may expire before they find another market for these services, or they find themselves warehousing and selling items far below their value. In some cases, the employees start to hover around these items like a bunch of vultures eyeing new prey. I don't think there are too many business owners that feel that they are not giving their employees enough, most feel it would be nice if these trade items ended up somewhere in the income received category of the financial statement. Many businesses turn down the opportunity to accept trade simply because they do not know what to do with it. 

By participating in an organization that specializes in trade, it is rather simple to turn whatever items you can receive in trade into trade credits that do not expire, and to direct those trade credits to purchase the items that you want to buy and not be stuck with only those items that you are offered in trade. 

Another avenue to pursue in accepting trade, gift certificates, vouchers, etc. is that you can take your product or service directly to another business, who doesn't have to be a trade club member and offer to trade them for their product or for their gift certificates, or perhaps they have some other items that they have taken in trade too! Whichever of these avenues open up for you will still result in the same goal; that of creating more trade credits for your business so that you can decrease your cash expenses or apply them to the building up of your business, or just have a good time! 

Many times the luxuries of taking off for a fun weekend, or going out to dinner, or buying something just for the fun of it are reserved for the wealthy. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a little of the hard earned wealth you created along the way -- NOW! 

The greatest benefit of using barter as a profit tool for your business comes when you are ready to spend your barter credits and eliminate necessary cash expenditures, thus conserving cash or finding better ways to use it.

If you find that you can realistically replace 10 to 15% of your business expenses by using barter credits, you will be incredibly motivated to go out and generate the amount needed to replace the 10 to 15% of cash expenditures. This will automatically result in an immediate cash savings equivalent to 10 to 15% of your business volume. This will give you the ability to either build a larger business, or better yet, just make more money. If you want to do something special for your employees, trade is a wonderful way to award special achievement incentives, or take the crew to lunch.

It is important when you start trading to "think trade". Whenever you need to purchase an item, consult your local trade directory and see if the item is available. If it is not, your next step should be to call your local Trade Director. Many times new members and new items are not yet published in the directory, but are still available. The local offices are staffed to meet your needs. They can not meet these needs without your calls and inquiries. If the items is still not available, they will be able to tell you if they can get if for you.

Aside from eliminating your expenses, you can also find ways to reduce your overhead costs that directly relate to your clients. If you are in a service business and find that you can order some items for your clients, such as printing, typesetting, photography, messenger service, food and lodging expense, you can still bill these services out just like you did before. This time, however, you get to keep the cash because you paid for the service with your trade account. Barter gives you so much flexibility when it comes to making those vital decisions that make or break your business.

By introducing your business to an environment of sophisticated traders, you are availing yourself to a market place that would otherwise be closed for new business.

Barter members always look for a way to purchase needed items through the membership directories prior to going out and spending cash for the same item. The only chance that you have of gaining their business is by belonging to the barter network. BXI has several publications which are distributed to the membership in local, regional and national levels throughout the year. One of these publications, the BXI Hotline, a national monthly shopper offers free advertising to members to promote members goods and services. By joining a trade club, you are actually expanding awareness of your business and company name to thousands of existing members. Other publications, newsletters and local directories offer display advertising for a fee. Always 100% barter credits.

As with your regular clients, it is important to reach out through advertising, special mailings and promotions to bring in new business. One of the great benefits of belonging to a barter organization is that putting business deals together through barter is much easier that bringing in new cash business. Because barter credits are not cash, members tend to be much more entrepreneurial in pursing ways to spend and invest their barter credits. Another avenue to pursue with barter is to increase advertising! When the economy gets slow, the first thing most businesses cut, is the size of their advertising budget. How can you expect to maintain your current level of business without advertising? It is just not possible. Barter gives you the ability to maintain your advertising budget, or even better, while most of your competition is slashing away at their advertising budgets, you can actually increase your visibility and attract a larger market share.