Paying with your product means spending less cash which leads to better cash flow. Contra4Business gives your product / service much greater liquidity. This in turn gives you greater spending power – your purchases need not change – you simply use more of your product and less of your cash.

Furthermore with Contra4Business’s Interest free trade credit facility * , you can buy a variety of needs now within agreed limits and pay later with your product / service. Effectively, Contra4Business offers you interest free credit and then generates extra business for you so you can pay it off.

Buying with your product / service means buying at a discount.

By using your product / service you automatically reduce the cash outlay and the net cost on those purchases. This is because your product / service costs you less to supply than its market value, the difference being your gross profit margin. Since Contra4Business charge a transaction fee of 8.25% on purchases ( no fees are charged on sales ) this must be factored into the equation.

Brief example;

You have a product / service which has a gross profit margin of 30%. This means that for every €100.00 worth of extra product / service you supply a customer, the additional cost ( materials, labour, distribution etc. ) to you will be €70.00. This means your cost of sales is 70%.

You are about to spend £10,000 on printing for a new brochure. If you pay for your printing as normal with cash, the cost to you will be £10,000. However, if you pay with your product / service via your Contra4Business account, the cost to you ( i.e.; cash outlay ) will be;

Summary: You have used £10,000 worth of your own product / service to buy £10,000 worth of printing at a total cost to you of £7,825, representing a net saving of £2,175. Obviously the greater your gross margin is then the greater the savings you will make.

Whatever variety of needs you choose to buy through your Contra4Business account, you will pay for them with your own product / service through sales leads generated by Contra4Business trading department for you.

Contra4Business Guarantee that all sales generated for you through your Tradefirst account will be to new customers who have never purchased from you before. Your regular cash or account sales are not affected by Contra4Business. They will not change whether or not you open a Contra4Businessaccount. Your Contra4Business sales are generated only as a result of sales enquiries from the Contra4Business client base.

Remember, other Contra4Business clients will want to buy from you, not from your competitors because;

1. Like you, they will want to buy on their Contra4Business account and you are a Contra4Business supplier
2. Most of your competitors are not and will never be Contra4Business suppliers because Contra4Business restricts the number of clients within each industry sector to a maximum of 10% in any sector / region. This high level of exclusivity guarantees you extra sales to new customers because the demand for your product / service is automatically channelled in your direction.

There is no typical line of products or services traded. Contra4Business, like any trade exchange will source anything for which there is a significant demand. The actual list of products and services changes literally on an hourly basis and is made up of approximately 70% – 80% business to business and 20% – 30% travel, leisure and home based products and services. All clients have full access to all products and services listed and advertised on the trading section of the web site which is constantly updated and expanding. See products and services

No. Contra4Business has built up strong reciprocal relationships with world leading trade exchanges such as ITEX Corporation of California, Bartercard UK, The Business Exchange, Scotland, TEC of France and the Swiss based World-wide Business Network. The benefits of these arrangements to Contra4Business clients are firstly the huge range of goods and services available world-wide and secondly Contra4Business clients have immediate access to a whole new potential export market.

The Contra4Business trading system has been specifically designed to integrate into any accounting system with no additional hardware or software requirement and no modifications to the structure of your existing system.

Operating a Contra4Business account is just like operating a bank account – You receive monthly statements detailing all transactions and balances. Contra4Business keep your accounts staff updated on all trade activity on your account and any changes to the operation of the account. It is estimated that irrespective of the level of trading, managing a Contra4Business account requires an additional four to ten minutes of time for one accounts assistant per month.

Furthermore, if your business is a multi-unit one with a number of cost / profit centers such as a hotel group or chain of shops or depots, Contra4Business will open as many sub accounts as you require ( at a nominal charge ) and apportion / bill each unit as you direct whilst maintaining a primary account for central processing.

The Contra4Business trading system has been specifically designed to integrate into any accounting system with no additional hardware or software requirement and no modifications to the structure of your existing system.

Operating a Contra4Business account is just like operating a bank account – You receive monthly statements detailing all transactions and balances. Contra4Business keep your accounts staff updated on all trade activity on your account and any changes to the operation of the account. It is estimated that irrespective of the level of trading, managing a Contra4Business account requires an additional four to ten minutes of time for one accounts assistant per month.

Furthermore, if your business is a multi-unit one with a number of cost / profit centers such as a hotel group or chain of shops or depots, Contra4Business will open as many sub accounts as you require ( at a nominal charge ) and apportion / bill each unit as you direct whilst maintaining a primary account for central processing.

It is up to you as long as you are working within agreed credit limits. If your current priority is to reduce cash expenditure now and improve cash flow, then you should buy first. If, however, your immediate goal is to increase sales, gain market share, widen your client base or sell excess stock then you should consider selling first.

In reality, once your account is operational, you will find that you will be buying and selling regularly and your account will reflect the type of activity on a regular bank current account.

Contra4Business has built-in safeguards to prevent excessive imbalances on your account;

1. Like many clients, you can opt to have all sales enquiries channelled through Contra4Business trading department simply by having your product or service instead of your business name listed. This way you can immediately distinguish Tradefirst sales enquiries from those of your regular cash or account clients.
2. You can put a limit on the value of sales you wish to do. Once you have reached this limit you can have your product or service de-listed and no further sales enquiries will be passed on to you until you have balanced your account with a value of purchases you are happy with
3. Contra4Business Trading Department will send you a monthly statement detailing all transactions and balances. Also, at any time, you can request an updated account statement, allowing you to monitor your trading activity on a daily basis.

As long as you make your product / service available subject to the terms and conditions of your Contra4Business agreement, the answer is no, you will not have to pay cash – The basic rule is that once Tradefirst agree a credit limit with you, the onus is on Contra4Business to generate the extra sales leads / customer base for you but the onus is on you to manage the sale to the client. In short, we send you customers, we do not sell your product.**

A nominal monthly / annual account maintenance fee is payable : see ( Open an account ) for details and payment options. This covers all administration related to your account, advertising and promotion of your product or service in Contra4Business publications, web page advertising including ad design and alterations and direct marketing to other clients who have expressed an interest in your particular line of products or services.

Thereafter trading fees are charged ( no foal-no-fee basis ) for each successful purchase transaction at the rate of 8.25% of the gross value ( inclusive of VAT ) in cash and 1% ( Bad debt reserve BDR fee ) in trade euros. BDR is automatically debited to your trade account. This protects you against any bad debts on Contra4Business sales provided you obtain a sales authorisation from the Trading Department

Note 1: No fees or commissions are charged on sales generated by Contra4Business for you.
Note 2: No interest is charged on debit balances on your Contra4Business account..
Note 3: All Contra4Business fees are subject to VAT at the prevailing rate. All fees are tax deductible.