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.

AO_CUTIE_PI · #7 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 · #8 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 · #9 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 · #10 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 · #11 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 · #12 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.

modorney · #13 04-22-2008, 10:35 AM

> 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.

That's true, but you can offer a discount for "cash" (checks).

amanda6035 · #14 04-22-2008, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by modorney

That's true, but you can offer a discount for "cash" (checks).

But why would you want to? The members have to pay anyway, or they'll get suspended, go to collections, etc etc. The way I see it, if they pay with cash or check, and you dont offer a discount, thats more money the chapter has to operate with.

We offer discounts for payment of full semester fees and dues prior to the first day of classes. That's the only discount we do, and we use it to encourage members to pay early so that 1, they wont have to worry about their bill over the semester, and 2, so we'll have the money when we need it, and not have to beg members at chapter meetings to pay their bill. No way would I give someone a cash/check discount "just because" (at some point during the semester) when thats extra money the chapter the chapter could use. We budget for a loss due to the discount at the beginning of the semester. Then when the semester starts, if not everybody took advantage of it, that discount money that we budgeted for goes to savings for a use in case of an emergency or something miscellaneous comes up.

amanda6035 · #15 04-22-2008, 10:51 AM

Also - from the FAQs page of the Omega Website:

Quote:

Q: What is the "Merchant Discount Fee" that you withhold from payments? Can I charge members for the "Merchant Discount Fee" when they pay by credit card?
The Merchant Discount Fee is solely associated with credit card payments. It is the fee the bank charges you for the liability associated with credit card payments and for the time value of money. Typically, when a member pays by credit card, you receive payment in a more timely fashion because the member might not otherwise be able to pay at that time. Also, once the payment is approved payment to you is guaranteed, even if the member does not pay the credit card company.
The Merchant Discount Fee cannot be passed on to the members. It is a violation of the merchant agreement to charge a card user the "Merchant Discount Fee" applied to credit card transactions. Despite the fee associated with credit card payments, this payment option will likely benefit your chapter in the long term.

*edit* okay, so I was mistaken when I said it was 'against the law.' I meant that it violated the merchant agreement.