Being a chapter Treasurer is a big responsibility. If your chapter doesn’t have enough money to support its activities or pay its bills, all members look to you as to why. Even though you’re just doing your job to help the chapter, you’re put in the position where you need to be the “bad guy”…and you aren’t even getting paid for this!
Most chapter Treasurers handle their dues internally, and on their own. They use excel spreadsheets, accounting software such as Intuit’s QuickBooks, and I’ve even heard of chapters that write down transactions on pizza boxes (seriously!). Although these solutions may have worked for your chapter in the past, they are by no means an efficient way to do your job. Why is that? None of these solutions were built specifically for Fraternity and Sorority dues collection and chapter treasurers. Even though you may be able to keep financial records of your dues collection with these systems, think about the amount of time you will spend sending email reminders to your brothers and sisters, reminding them about their upcoming payments that are due, or payments that are late!
What happens when a member wants to know how much money they owe a month into the semester? You have to spend time looking up all of their transactions and replying to them.
What happens if they (or their parents) want to pay by credit card? These methods wont allow this convenient payment method.
How do you keep track of Payment Plans and ensure that members are sticking to them?
These are the main reasons why being a chapter treasurer can be difficult if you don’t have the right tools to do your job!
So what tools are available, specifically for fraternity and sorority treasurers?
There are two efficient solutions to dues collection:
- Billing & Collection Services
- Dues Collection Software
Billing and Collection Services
Billing and Collection Services have been around for many years. The purpose of these services is to outsource the chapter’s billing and collections to a financial institution. Billing services offer chapter treasurers the luxury of putting the “collection” burden of dues collection on a company. Instead of the treasurer billing his/her members for dues each semester, the billing service invoices each member, and ensures that each member makes his/her payments. When members make their payments, they are paid directly to the billing service, who controls the finances of the chapter. If members do not make their payments, these services give the chapter the option to send members to collections, forcing them to pay in order to prevent their credit from being affected.
This solution sounds great so far, doesn’t it? You get to be your chapter’s treasurer, serve on the chapter’s Executive Board (or what ever your chapter calls your leadership board), and you don’t have to the difficult tasks involved with dues collection! Yes, in fact Billing and Collection services can be great for some Greek chapters; however, this luxury comes at a cost! Because of the labor involved with outsourcing your chapter’s dues collection, billing and collection services are not inexpensive. Their cost typically is based on a percentage of your chapter’s collections. For small chapters (in terms of amount of dues collected), the cost averages about 10% of your dues collection. For larger chapters the percentage is smaller, since significantly more money is being collected (and the fee is still more than the 10% for small chapters).
So who should use a Billing and Collections service? In my oppinion, billing and collection services are a great solution for chapters that collect a very large amount of dues each semester. For example, a chapter that collects $100,000+ in a semester could potentially be in serious financial trouble if the chapter treasurer doesn’t collect $20,000 of its estimated collections. These are typically situations where the chapter has its own house, and members are paying rent to the chapter or a housing association in order to pay a mortgage or re-pay a chapter loan. It’s critical in these situations that the chapter is able to make these large payments, and keep the chapter house available to its members.
Where Billing and Collections service fall short is for small and averaged sized chapters. These are chapters where the treasurer is able to manage dues collection on his/her own; however he/she wants something to make the job of being treasurer easier, more efficient, and organized. In such a case, a situation where the chapter gives away 10% of dues collection for using a billing and collection service would not be approved by the chapter, since 10% of the budget could be allocated in a more useful way for the chapter, and the treasurer doesn’t need a billing and collections service to be successful with his/her position. This would be a perfect example of a chapter that should use Dues Collection Software.
Dues Collection Software
EasyDues is the most popular dues collection software for fraternities and sororities. It is web based software, which means that you can access it online, from any computer with an internet connection. Instead of charging a percentage of your chapter’s collections, EasyDues charges a flat fee of $295 per year for its software subscription. EasyDues was developed by a fraternity treasurer, specifically for Fraternity and Sorority chapters. Instead of handling your dues collection externally, EasyDues empowers chapter treasurers with the tools they need to keep their internal dues collection organized, efficient, and successful.
Some of the main features of EasyDues are:
- Automated Payment Reminder Emails
- Payment Plan Scheduling and Management
- Electronic Invoices
- Budget Creation System
- Credit Card Payments
- Financial Reporting
Not only does EasyDues provide an excellent solution for chapter treasurers who wish to manage their dues collection internally, it includes many features that benefit the chapter as a whole, such as its Alumni Directory, Chapter Document Sharing, and many more! To learn more about EasyDues visit www.EasyDues.com.
So which should you use?
Ultimately the decision to use a Dues Collection Software or a Billing and Collection Service is up to you (if you have the authority to make this decision for your chapter), or your chapter. Both options were developed specifically for fraternities and sororities, and chapters have had great success with both of them. Gone are the days where chapter treasurers should be left without a solution to help them do their job, it’s a volunteer position, and it shouldn’t be a full time headache!