Membee E-billing is Easy and Effective
“Since we implemented E-billing and Beanstream, outstanding AR has gone way down”. Rather than always hearing from us, we thought you might like to know what someone in the trenches has to say. We heard Nancy Billard, Program & Marketing Coordinator of the Chamber of Commerce Brantford-Brant talking about their implementation of Membee’s E-billing. We …
“Since we implemented E-billing and Beanstream, outstanding AR has gone way down”.
Rather than always hearing from us, we thought you might like to know what someone in the trenches has to say. We heard Nancy Billard, Program & Marketing Coordinator of the Chamber of Commerce Brantford-Brant talking about their implementation of Membee’s E-billing. We asked her if she would mind sharing her experience and some tips for a successful launch with our readers.
Interview with Nancy:
You were telling someone how successful E-billing had been for you just after you launched and we wanted to know how it has been going since then. What has your ongoing experience been?
It has continued to work very well. When we initially launched E-billing one of the first things we used it for was one of our fall 2011 events. What we saw for that event was that our Accounts Receivables were the reverse of what they had been. Typically, we were seeing a rate of 35% paid and 65% outstanding. After using E-billing the rates changed to 78% paid and only 22% outstanding. What we have seen is that pattern continuing both for events and membership dues. It has been terrific. | “AR rates reversed”
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E-billing wasn’t one of the first modules you launched. Were there barriers to implementing it?
There were a couple of things that caused us to pause a bit. We wanted to make sure all the staff were comfortable with their roles related to the roll out.
We were also in the midst of launching our new website and we wanted to have that out of the way before we started E-billing. The redesign of our site held us back a bit. We didn’t wish to bombard our members with a whole pile of changes at once and opted to do it in stages. The next step for us will be to introduce the Member login where members can manage their own profiles and purchase a la carte items such as social media icons, and staff photographs. This will have ebilling capability as well.
How did your members react to the change?
“Our members | Our members love it! We kind of expected that though, because this was done in response to their needs. The ability to make online payments was one of the things on their wish list. We had surveyed them and knew it was something they wanted so it was easy to get their buy in. |
How did you find the steps to roll out the E-billing page?
| It was easy. On the whole it was a very smooth process. Very simple to roll out and we only encountered a couple of minor glitches during the whole process. | “It was easy!” |
Any advice or tips for other Membee users with regard to E-billing?
“Don’t be | Number One – Don’t be afraid of it! I know that changes like this make people anxious. Don’t suffer the anxiety – the rewards are monumental in terms of efficiency and customer service. It is a win / win for both your staff and your members. Number Two – It’s worth taking the time to go through the documentation so you understand the steps. There were a few “techie” terms but it wasn’t too bad. |
You said that it improved efficiency. How?
Just by reducing the time and the number of steps. We use E-billing for both membership dues and events billing. My experience is mainly on the events side of things where, in the previous process, our customer would call and say that they wanted to purchase a ticket. Often they were leaving a message, so we would call them back and quite often miss them. Once we finally did contact them, we would get their credit card number. Only our bookkeeper could process that so we would send the information to her and wait for the purchase amount to go through. She would then have to get back to us and we would send out a receipt.
| Now all of those steps are gone. If a member registers online and requires a bill we simply send it out to them and they pay and print the receipt themselves if they want one. We don’t have to worry about keeping credit card numbers secure and it is much less time consuming. I’m all for anything that saves staff time. | “I’m all for anything that saves staff time.” |
The Chamber of Commerce Brantford-Brant
| The Chamber of Commerce Brantford-Brant has served the Brantford and Brant County Ontario business community for over 145 years. Visit their website at http://www.brantfordbrantchamber.com for more information. |
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You Can E-bill Too
Setting up Ebilling is easy. The instructions can be found in the article at Setting Up and Maintaining E-billing. If you haven’t already set up an account with a Payment Gateway that is something that you will want to consider too – Setting Up Your Payment Gateway. Remember that you will need your username and password to access the articles.