Omega Financial

amanda6035 · #1 02-02-2007, 11:50 AM

How many of your organizations use Omega?

I was FVP for 2 years, and tomorrow, I'm co-hosting the FVP portion of regional officer training with 8 chapters across the southeast.

I'd like to think I know Omega pretty well, but I also know that it has ALOT of features that I personally never had use for, given the small size of my chapter.

Any of you FVPs out there who have some thoughts, advise, or tips for using omega that I can be sure to cover tomorrow, please let me know. One of my biggest complaints when I took over FVP is that the prior FVP didnt do crap for training me, so I pretty much taught myself. I'd like to be able to pass on what I've learned, and also tips from others, things that you *wish* you would have known about sooner.

Thanks for your help!

shinerbock · #2 02-02-2007, 12:53 PM

We switched over to Omega about 5 years ago. Seems to work pretty well.

strubbe · #3 02-02-2007, 01:01 PM

We use it as well. I love it personally. Makes paying dues and other fees really easy/painless.

Kevin · #4 02-02-2007, 01:30 PM

Our active use it. I was treasurer for a year, so from that perspective, I can recommend it highly. It keeps track of payments, due dates, etc. for you. You even have the ability to send people off to collections.

It really helped to let the guys pay their dues via credit card, have monthly statements sent to their parents or themselves, etc. They could also log on to their accounts online to check their balances.

amanda6035 · #5 02-02-2007, 03:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin

They could also log on to their accounts online to check their balances.

This is my favorite part of omega - the ability to login and see stuff. And I cant get 80% of my chapter to use it! They would rather get the paper statement, or worse yet, call me up and say "how much do I owe? Can I write you a check?.." (so then, I have to make a trip to the bank to depositi it...) and I ESPECIALLY love the excuse for the girls who are paranoid about paying online that they dont wanna use their credit card.

I had gotten to the point that if a sister didnt pay her bill on time, I changed her billing address to her parents address for the next month - so that way I knew mom and dad would get it.

Kevin · #6 02-02-2007, 04:18 PM

The thing about being a good treasurer is that you can't be afraid to be the bad guy. At meeting, during my report, I'd always read a list of members who hadn't paid their dues. I made sure they understood that I was serious about going after their badges if they go too far behind, and I made examples of a few of them by sending them off to collections.

All in all, I collected just about everything we were owed. The treasurer's job is to look after the financial aspects of the house. Let the other officers worry about brotherhood, fun, etc.

To speak to one of your problems, amanda, to get guys to look at their online accounts (and I know OmegaFi has a very strange login system requiring an account number or something if that's still accurate), I'd post a list of account numbers with the last 4 digits of each brother's social next to them in the house. I stopped answering the "what is my account number" questions. They were just referred to the board which they should have been looking at every day anyhow.

It worked out.

Tom Earp · #7 02-02-2007, 05:08 PM

Yes, while I was not for it, we had to revert to it and it helped.

Yes, they do take a % back they also got monies back that We may have not gotten for Dues and House Rents.

While I may not condone it, those that owe money and not pay can put a Chapter in problems are bound by contract along with the Parents who co-sign.

Harsh, NO it is not! What is harsh is members not covering fellow members.

amanda6035 · #8 02-02-2007, 05:16 PM

from a strictly business standpoint, i think it's fabulous that they'll send that person to collections if they dont get their crap together. In 2 years, I dealt with too many girls who were just too damn lazy to pay their bill, and I constantly tried to finda way to help them. At my school, dues come out to about $15.00 a week. Seriously, if you cant afford $15.00 a week throughout the semester, you shouldnt be joining.

we offer payment plans, and we'll hold off omega from doing the collections thing as long as we can. But if I'm FVP and you owe the chapter $60 and you come in sporting a new tattoo or purse or some crap like that, no way in hell am I gonna have sympathy for you. *disclaimer against gifts - you guys know what I mean....

The percentage that Omega takes for your collected money is well worth the hassel you would be caused by not having an outside agency to file the collections notices. Besides, like someone else mentioned, you can use your credit card because of it.

carnation · #9 02-02-2007, 06:44 PM

There are other threads on Omega here.They've made me crazy several times--we'd have paid well before time and we'd still get unpleasant notices from them.

AO_CUTIE_PI · #10 04-30-2007, 11:27 PM

Hey,
We just switched to Omega, it is so much better, and easier. My favorite is that is goes on your credit therefore people are less likely to not pay.

Kevin · #11 04-30-2007, 11:43 PM

Considering that your chief financial officer is a fellow student and not necessarily responsible enough to keep track of dues, it's well worth whatever the cost to allow someone else to take that burden away from them.

At one point in our colony days, we had a treasurer quit school in the middle of his term. A quick review of the books showed that he had neither been keeping track of dues nor paying them himself.

We got Omega and that's no longer an issue or a possibility. There's instant oversight from the chapter's financial adviser and the President. There's a great reporting system where the financial officer can take 2 minutes before meeting and be able to see the whole financial picture with a very limited amount of effort.

Also, when I was treasurer, I found that offering guys the ability to pay dues by credit card worked wonders for my bottom line.

Somehow, I managed a 100%+ collection rate and really don't feel like I had to do much to succeed.

Yeah, there are tons of threads on Omega, but they are great.

As a side note, some organizations are founding their own Omegas Fi-like organizations.

I believe that Sigma Nu is working on some sort of service as we speak -- it makes sense. All of those profit dollars could go into HQ's operating fund instead of into some other company's bank account.

Osujay29 · #12 04-21-2008, 05:38 PM

When you pay with a cc with Omega who pays the cc fee? Is it the responsibility of the member or does the chapter foot the bill for the fee?

Sounds like a pretty slick system but I'm just trying to figure out how much it actually costs and who actually pays for it. We are running on a pretty tight budget as it is so any extra money out of our budget just isn't going to happen.

AZ-AlphaXi · #13 04-21-2008, 06:10 PM

chapter foots the bill for the merchant fee and the Omega Financial fee. If you want the members to payit than you have to raise your dues to cover the fees.

amanda6035 · #14 04-21-2008, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZ-AlphaXi

chapter foots the bill for the merchant fee and the Omega Financial fee. If you want the members to payit than you have to raise your dues to cover the fees.

To add to this, you CANNOT look at a payment and notice the credit card fee, and then ask that member to pay that fee. It's against the law. The company (or in our case, the chapter) is responsible for the CC fees.

Like AZ-Alpha Xi said, all you can really do is raise dues to offset the fees, or be prepared to work with a lesser budget. When I helped the FVP create the chapter budget this year, in addition to the omega fees, we estimated the cost if every single payment were to be made by credit card. Obviously, they wont, and there will be money left over at the end of the year, but it's better to over estimate and get money back, than to under estimate, and be short handed. I think most credit card fees are anywhere from 1.9-3% of the payment. So we calculated our Omega fees + 3% as fees that were being pulled from our chapter dues that we did not have to work with.

Osujay29 · #15 04-21-2008, 09:16 PM

Thanks for the info.

I don't know if you can do it with Omega but in general I know you can charge a service fee on cc and dc transactions. People do it all the time to me when I have to go pull permits for my summer job. I guess that basically the same as raising dues.