Every month, money leaves your account for card processing — and the statement that explains it seems written not to be read. Network costs depend on the cards accepted, transaction characteristics, merchant program, and schedule vintage. Processor pricing is set by agreement. If an equipment lease appears, the audit shows it separately because it is usually its own contract — not network cost and not ordinary processor pricing. Statements are processed in your authenticated browser, not uploaded to the Statement Forensics backend. Internet access is required for sign-in and authorized rates.
Most reviews of a processing statement compare rates and stop there. Your statement also announces its own price increases in a paragraph on page one that reads like a notice, reports the return and chargeback ratios the card networks judge your account on, bills you for authorizations that never became a sale, and carries fee lines with no published rate behind them at all. And an account can be priced badly as a whole while every single line on it is correct — that gets its own finding too, measured against what your own card mix could have cost.
No statement carries everything. When yours doesn’t, the report doesn’t guess and it doesn’t go quiet either — it gives you a page headed “Questions to take back to your processor”. Which documents to ask for, and separately the handful of things no document settles, each written as a question you can read down the phone, with the reason your statement can’t answer it. None of them accuses anyone of anything. Every one has a legitimate answer available, and several usually do — which is why they are questions.
If your statement prints a reason against each dispute, the audit groups them for you. Fraud, a product or delivery complaint, and a billing mistake are three different problems with three different fixes — and many merchants are sold fraud tools for what turns out to be a shipping or description issue. You will see which one you actually have, in dollars.
Fixed network cost on one side, your processor's negotiable price on the other – and every network rate compared to the official published schedule in force for that month. Anything charged above it is named, with the dollars to recover – and any line the schedule can't confirm is flagged, not quietly passed as fact.
Some transactions fall into pricier rate buckets because of a setting – incomplete business-card data, batches settled late, or a processor setup that hasn't kept up with the card networks' rule changes (Visa rewrote its business-card data program in 2026). The audit names each one, why it happened, and the fix. Real savings, zero negotiation.
Processors announce increases in the fine print, months ahead. The audit reads the statement messages, tells you what's coming, and when it lands, shows exactly what it costs – like a recent case where a buried notice became $30 a month. And if you just switched processors on a promise of savings, the audit compares the old and new statements and shows whether the better deal actually arrived. And when your monthly cost moves, the audit shows exactly why – in dollars, part by part.
A rate you were quoted and a rate you were boarded at are two different things, and the first statement after a switch is where the difference shows up. Send that statement with the terms you were promised and the audit reprices your own card mix at those terms — what the pricing you agreed to should have cost, against what you were actually billed. Promise kept, or the gap in dollars a month and a year, with the boarding mistake behind it named where it can be seen. Boarding errors are common and almost never deliberate — but nobody finds them unless somebody looks.
Some statements bill card costs under the processor’s own labels — “qualified”, “mid-qualified”, or one blended discount rate — instead of naming the card networks’ actual programs. When that happens the exact network cost cannot be worked out, and this audit will not invent one. Instead your bill is split in two: the part that is known to the penny, and the part where the published rates can only narrow it down. For that second part you are given a lowest and a highest — the cheapest and the most expensive card-network program those sales could possibly have been, both read off the networks’ published rates, with the rate printed beside each one. So rather than a single number nobody can defend, you get a range you can take straight to your processor. Ask them for a statement that names its categories and the range closes to one figure.
One statement is enough to start. Three lets the audit see what a single month cannot — and every figure in that report is then the whole period’s figure, not one month standing in for three. Each month still gets its own section at the back under its own name, so nothing is averaged away. If your processor raised your price during those months, it is on page one with what it costs you a year — and whether it was announced in the fine print beforehand or simply appeared.
The card networks reserve their cheaper programs — restaurant, supermarket, fuel, utility, charity — for accounts carrying the matching business code. That code is set once, when your account is opened, and almost nobody revisits it. The categories your statement bills are evidence of the code you are actually on, because the networks only allow those programs to an account coded for them. So if the audit is run as your kind of business and none of your transactions clear the programs that business should reach, either the type is wrong or your account is coded wrong — and the difference is paid on every transaction, indefinitely. It is not a price your processor set, chose, or can waive. One question settles it, and the report gives you the words.
Mastercard’s Global Merchant Audit Program takes effect in 2027, and it changes the dispute threshold in stages: the line that matters today moves down again in 2029, 2030 and 2031. Two things make it worth knowing early. It is measured per location rather than across your whole account, so a single problem site can put you in the program while your overall numbers look fine. And it counts fraud reported without a chargeback — activity that never appears on your statement at all. If you are comfortably clear today but would sit inside a later stage, the report tells you that, with the year. Nobody gets a warning letter for a threshold that has not arrived yet; the point is to have the years to move before it does. The schedule the audit uses came from an industry summary rather than from Mastercard’s own published document, and the report says so beside the finding.
Card-testing attacks that bill you per attempt, network "integrity" fines charged for faulty authorizations, and dispute levels that put merchants into costly monitoring programs. When any of these appears, the report includes a one-page brief your agent can act on.
Some fees aren't negotiable – they're avoidable. A "PCI non-compliance" charge, for example, disappears entirely once a yearly compliance form is completed. The report says so, in those words.
When the bank behind your account changes, or your terms are quietly updated, the audit calls it out and tells you what to verify – before "continued use constitutes acceptance" works against you.
Independent. Beech Edwards has no stake in any processor or platform – nobody upstream profits from the findings, so the report has no reason to flatter anyone. Held in strict confidence. Your statements are used only to perform the audit, are seen only by the person performing it, are never shared or sold, and are deleted when the reports are delivered. Accountable to the penny. Every report reconciles against your statement's own printed totals before it says a word – and if it can't, it tells you that instead. Evidence, not promises. No inflated savings claims: the report shows what's fixed, what's negotiable, and what's avoidable – in dollars – and the decision stays yours.
A plain-English summary for the business owner – what you paid, what's negotiable, what changed, what to do. And a full working report for your agent or bookkeeper – every line, every rate, every month compared. Same numbers, two vocabularies.
1. Send us one to three recent processing statements (PDF) – one is enough to start; three months lets the audit catch price changes as they happen. 2. We run the independent audit and reconcile every figure to your statements' own totals. 3. You receive both reports – and your statements are deleted.