About a month ago we were approached by the owner of a small specialty hosting company and after talks his company merged with us. Since day one of this merger there has been problem after problem, from his mismanagement of customers, to very little auditing when it take to client information, money and even the IP/server allocation. Currently we have 3 servers; 2 are his and the other is our main shared server. We have about 64 (the majority are his and he has no list what so ever of what is assigned to who). I am really beginning to wonder if this was even worth is and if it is even worth continuing to put the effort into managing this company or if I should just grab what assets I can and leave the remains of the business. What do you guys think; also any advice as to what I should do?

I also have another question; we have 10 staff yet the vast majority of them just take up space, request leave or just disappear for no reason at all. Should I try retraining them, toss those who do not work or should I jsut fire them all and only run this myself with my business partner. We have about 150 clients. Some are high maintenance.

EDIT: Also what are the best payment processors to use. I would think accepting credit cards yourself without using a merchant alternative like paypal or 2checkout would be better but you still need those *other* options. Thus the question what options are better per-say.

as for staying in the business, ask yourself, are you happy? If you're happy with the set up then stay but from your description, you don't seem to be getting too much out of it, just a ton of problems, in that case you can grab your assets and just leave the company. The negative pressure wouldn't be worth it for me if I was put in a situation like that.

As for your staff, throw out those that don't work, why keep them if they don't work? They obviously don't want to work so give them what they want. Keeping them while they don't work is the same as managing your entire server by yourself.

And for payment processors, don't know any from the top of my head, but you should google merchant services or something and come up with something. I have a friend that uses a merchant service for accepting CC but I'm drawing blanks on the name. I'll see if I can find it somewhere.

Get the staff in one by one and tell them to buck there idea's or they will get canned. You may just need to outright fire the really usless ones and people may take notice. Also Try and identify what skills what employees have. Trying identify the leaders, trouble makers, and negative people. Fire the trouble makers straight away unless they have valuable skills you will have to buck there ideas up. Talk to the negative people and encourage the leaders. You will have to be ruthless you are a manager.

Once you have got your staff problems fixed. Setup a merger project to ingrate there customers and systems into yours.

Create a customer survery and send it to all there customers to gain more information and help fill in the gaps. Setup something as simple as a spreadsheet or a database ip management product and map out all your ip's.

It sounds like if you are having all these problems that you did not undertake proper due diligence and learn about the business you where merging with.

If you are really dispearing take your resources with you and try and poach some of his staff and customers.

I would consider dissolving the merger, and just leaving with what you came in with.

EDIT: Also what are the best payment processors to use. I would think accepting credit cards yourself without using a merchant alternative like paypal or 2checkout would be better but you still need those *other* options. Thus the question what options are better per-say.

PayPal and 2Checkout.com are third party processors -- as is Google Checkout. You are paying a negotiated transaction fee to the third party processor which is then paying a fee to their merchant bank/acquirer. This setup is very similar to the web hosting industry where you rent dedicated servers and essentially resell space that you pay for.

My recommendation would be to establish a merchant account directly with a processor/acquirer. This route will generally get you better rates than going through a third party processor.

Costco used to have some of the cheapest rates in the industry at something around 1.99% + a per transaction fee. CDGCommerce is also highly recommended on this board and is worth checking out.