Member Billing:  Member Statement Display & Payment

Tightly Integrated Accounting Interfaces

Clubessential is the leading vendor in the club market in terms of interfacing, offering over 40 different kinds of interfaces, 15 of those to member billing systems.  But it is the depth of Clubessential's offerings, not their breadth, that sets Clubessential apart.  Here are some examples of features only available in Clubessential interfaces:

• Accounting displays share the branding of the website
• Email targetting based on chit data
• Support for multiple accounts per member and multiple minimums
• The ability to break out charges within a family
• Cross-marketing from the statement display
• Full extract and reporting for groups of members based on accounting data 
• Personalization of emails and webpages with accounting data

Some accounting vendors have offered simple online interfaces to their accounting data, claiming that since these systems come from a single vendor, they are "more tightly integrated."  Aside from the fact that most of these interfaces were purchased from third parties, the claim that they are "more tightly integrated" does not pass the key test: which system can do more for the client?  Clubessential's industry standard interfaces are accounting vendor independent yet do more with the accounting data than the accounting vendors can do themselves.  Furthermore, Clubessential is committed to rapidly enhancing its offerings -  and has a multi-year track record of rapid advances to prove it.

Which Vendor Should You Use?

Recently we have seen several accounting vendors introduce online systems for displaying and paying member statements. As a result, many club managers are wondering where to draw the line: should all things related to accounting be hosted by the accounting firm? Would this introduce a level of “tight integration” that would simplify matters?

We think not. We think that all applications which are served by the web and are member-facing should be integrated and delivered by the Internet focused vendor, because the graphical interlocking nature of these applications is very different than traditional accounting functions, and should be left to those who specialize in delivering member-facing systems. The concerns are different, the computers are different, the computer languages are different, the service levels are different, the turn-around times required are different – even the structure of the required support organizations is different. The “tight integration” that is important is the tight integration of all the Internet based systems, which can then use a single industry standard interface to the accounting system as shown in the following diagram:

When the accounting vendor introduces a second online system to display statements (or capture tee times or court reservations), this increases complexity by introducing not only the additional web system, but two additional interfaces: one to pass the accounting data to the accounting vendor’s web system, and another to provide a single sign-on between the primary web system and the accounting vendor’s web system:




If the club installs the statement display websystem from the accounting vendor this will mean the staff will need to learn two kinds of tools to maintain websites.  It will also mean that the branding so carefully designed for the main website will conflict with the more commercial and institutional feel of the accounting vendor's websystem.  So, even though it might, at first thought, seem that the simplest approach would be to "leave accounting to the accounting vendor," in actuallity, by far the simplest and most effective approach is to use a single industry standard interface to the accounting system and leave all the member-facing website work to the website experts.

Online Member Statements

The Online Member Statements product allows members to review their bills online, including historical months, chit details and minimum balances.  Key features of this system include:

So, if you want to create a lot of traffic on your website while offering a nice service for your members (not to mention clearing up confusion about billed items the members don’t remember), you may want to consider Online Member Statements.

Online Member Payments

Once members can review their statements online with Online Member Statements, they will quickly start asking to pay their bills online.  They will of course ask to pay using credit cards in order to receive frequent flier miles, but for every dollar of benefits they would receive, the club would lose at least ten dollars in credit card fees, so credit cards are usually not the best option.  So Clubessential has introduced Online Member Payments which supports not only credit card payments, but alternatively the use of cash transfers from member checking accounts to the club's account, at the cost of just 65 cents per transaction, no matter how large the transaction.

• Cash is transferred by PaySimple, a leading cash transfer vendor with thousands of clients. 
• No additional sign-in is required because the payment system is tightly integrated with the website.  In fact, the payment options are built right into the Online Member Statements displays.
• A video tutorial teaches new users how to create accounts and make payments.
• Cash goes directly from the member’s account to the club’s account in one business day.  There is no lost interest and no period of time when the cash is pooled with other clubs’ cash in “legal limbo” in some third party’s account.  This is an important issue, because if dozens of clubs have all their cash floating in some third party account, millions of dollars can be at risk.
• Transfers of as much as $50,000 are allowed.
• Payments may be made from US banks in foreign countries (in US dollars).
• Automatic payment options can be turned on and off by the member anytime.  So if they plan to take an extended vacation to France for the summer, they can just set their bill for auto-payment.  They can always review the details online. Many members prefer this option whether or not they go on vacation.   When setting up automatic payments, the member can set a maximum payment size. 
• Payments can be made from multiple accounts and can be scheduled for future payment.
• Non-profit clubs have three ways to prevent use of business accounts:
  1. There is an area to place a request that business accounts not be used.
  2. The club can require that the member check a box certifying that they are not using a business account.
  3. As the third and most restrictive option, the club can reserve the ability to add member accounts to club administrators, after verification of non-business status. 
• The finanical processor keeps all the sensitive financial information – sensitive information is not stored on Clubessential’s servers nor on the club’s servers.  This is an important liability consideration.
• The system automatically knows which account is associated with a member – no accidental payment of some other member’s bill – a problem alternative systems may have.
• Every time a member signs up or changes to a different account, there is no paperwork for the club’s accountants to handle – Online Member Payments manages the changes automatically.  You can imagine how often there would be changes if 500 members were using the system, so this is a great time saver.
• Once payments are made, accountants can view a handy online “payment console” to review transactions and then forward them for automatic posting in a batch.
• Members like the fact that they are in complete control: if they don’t push the button, no payments are made.  This solves the problem of the harried father who owes $30,000 for a wedding but hasn’t transferred the cash to his account yet.  It would not be amusing to go through recovering from a bounced automatic transfer of $30,000.
• Best of all, the cost is 65 cents per transaction – way less than it costs just to open envelopes and post checks and roughly a tenth the cost of credit card fees.  The 65 cents fee even applies to $30,000 payments.
• For those clubs that need to accept credit card payments, those options are available as well.

Analyzing And Reporting From Accounting Data

There are two ways to display statements online.

1. The easy way:  Just post an image of a statement created by the member billing system. 
2. The much harder way:  Reconstruct the statement from the underlying data. 

This second approach is the one used by Clubessential.

Why would Clubessential go to all the trouble of capturing the underlying data and reconstructing the statement?  The answer: Clubessential has much more ambitious plans for this data.  Its accounting interface reorganizes the data into a "relational" form so that Clubessential can integrate other applications that make use of the accounting data.  Here are some examples:

• Snippets.  Any items in the member's statements can become part of the "personalization" of a page or an email.  So it is possible, for example, to send a personal email to a member noting their minimum balance.
• Dynamic Groups.  Not only can a group be created that includes members based on their statement data (e.g., all those with outstanding 60 day balances greater than zero), but chit data can be used to create Dynamic Groups (e.g., all those members who, in the prior 60 days, have ordered one of six types of wine).  Of course, once a Dynamic Group is defined, an administrator can email that group or export any of the data related to that group.  The reporting is quick and there are no hours-long extract processes to go through because Clubessential has already extracted and organized the data as part of its Online Member Statements process.

Clubessential will also release an even more advanced feature called POS Analytics that will allow in detail analysis/graphic display of POS data.