90p Admin

Here's a crazy idea -- could we totally automate our renewals by using something like Eventbrite. This service allows you to sell tickets to an event. In this case could we have everyone self-service whether they are going to join or renew by creating an event - sharing the link internally and then linking it to a Paypal account. Looks as if our fee would be: - 2.5% plus .99 per ""ticket"" Payment processing (if we accept credit cards) Paypal - 2.9% + .30 per transaction Which means on a $ 200 member renewal we'd pay about $ 5.99 per transaction (times about 30 people is roughly $180) That's assuming we do not offer credit cards. Offering credit cards seems to roughly double the cost of processing the transaction to about $12 per member. This might be a really easy way to manage our billings because it would put the bulk of the work onto the people signing up. I think it also allows you to purchase and indicate you would like to send a check. http://www.eventbrite.com/features Potentially we might even be able to create events for OASIS members who join mid-year and have the price pro-rated (we'd compute the pro-rate and post the link on our web site). Thoughts? Maybe we should create an account and test it quickly before getting into a longer process of loading data into Billing Boss. My fear with BB is that we have to put a lot of effort into creating ""customer"" accounts and many of the people might not even renew. With Eventbrite -- if it works like I think it could -- we'd create two events: a. 90 Minds Renewal -- 11/1/11 -- send it out to members b. OASIS Fee -- 11/1/11 -- send it out to OASIS They then input all their own data and we get back information on who has taken the time to enroll. This actually becomes even better as we move forward if you think that we can create multiple events and post them on our OASIS site for prospects to just pay at their leisure so we aren't chasing them and setting up accounts in BB for people who may never join. ??

Here is a real quick and dirty example -- I am not sure why the fee is higher than that stated on Eventbrite's site -- looks as if we can tack that fee onto the membership -- so if we're charging $200 the total price is $200 plus the fee. http://90mindsrenew.eventbrite.com/

Ok looks like Eventbrite takes a cut for acting as the merchant and they send you the money collected 5 days after the event ends.

why not just use the paypal subscription based billing. Those that sign up can use paypal, or can use their credit card with paypal.

We can but I'm not sure if we can create an automated link. If we can create a link to gather data from the people then that would work too. Some people use personal credit cards so we'd potentially (under the Paypal model) have to figure out to Fred Smiths credit card belongs to...

Maybe we can combine a form with a paypal button on our 90 Minds web site. I like the idea of everyone entering their own information. I would like to offload as much administration as possible if it can be done by a 3rd party tool at a reasonable cost.

http://www.gravityforms.com/add-ons/paypal/ for $39 for one site.

That looks good to me

There are several ask a question wordpress plugins.

Call me old fashion but this nets to a lot of money just to have a solution in the cloud where it is accessible by the admin group. As an alternative, why not continue to use MAS with AR repititve invoices and paperless office? Pick an annual billing date for 90Minds and set that for the group. Same thing for the OASIS. For Mid year billings, prorate the charge, send it out then set the invoice for annual renewal group. Send checks. Yes, there is some overhead involved here also, but if we are willing to pay for the cloud service and billing, why not pay someone in the group to do the same. Keep the money local. And by doing it in MAS, we can easily transfer the data files to someone else if needed. Just a thought on the alternative.

I think there's more to this. Address changes. Requests for copies of invoices. People who don't pay and need to be culled from online. Dunning notices. Believe it because I have gone through all this the last time we invoiced. These all take a lot more time than you think. Ideally we should have a link where people can enter in their own information and put some skin in the game. Adding people in requires a system or there are going to be periods of time when we are busy with customers and can't pay attention to admin. I suspect the best way to do this is with a Paypal account and the plug-in that Robert found. My only problem with Paypal is even though they offer credit cards as a payment type half the people look at the paypal button, don't read the screen, and contact you (or just don't pay) because they mistakenly think they have to have Paypal to pay.

Unless I'm mis-reading this Paypal screen -- the transaction fees for us to accept Paypal seems almost identical to this Eventbrite: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_display-fees-outside

Very informative @MarkChinsky! :D