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Defining Your Timeline
Each Real Estate association Association has unique processprocesses, procedures, and schedules for tracking and collecting overdue invoices. The processes defined in this document are designed to support your needs, whether you utilize all some, all, or very few of them. Use the blank timeline below to outline when your association will take different actions on overdue invoices, like adding late fees or suspending agents.
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Setup > Memberships, Membership Settings > Proration Settings tab
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Enable Bill Next Cycle Now
The system will create a prorated invoice for the remainder of the current billing cycle and an invoice for the next billing cycle.
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Set Lead Days to Charge Next Bill
Per billing frequency, the number of days before a new billing cycle that the system will create an invoice for the current billing cycle and the next billing cycle. You generally want this to start on or slightly before the day you create invoices for your active members’ association dues.
Example: If you send out invoices on October 1st, you may want to set the Annual frequency to 95 days. For 2022, this means that any member who joins on or after Wednesday, September 28th will be invoiced for their 2022 and 2023 dues after submitting their application.
NOTE: This setting applies to all memberships in your system, so be sure to review the settings for all billing frequencies that you use for MLS fees, lockbox fees, or other memberships.
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Setup > Memberships, Application Forms
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Disable Automatically Approve Applications
You and your staff should have a chance to review applications before approving them. This gives allows you a chance to review their letter of good standing, check their license, and do any other checks. This is likely already disabled for your association membership application, but if enabled, this setting will prevent you from enabling the next setting.
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Enable Capture Payment Profile and Charge on Approval
Applicants will be required to must provide a credit card before submitting a membership application. When you’re ready to approve the new member, the system will charge their provided credit card.
NOTE: When used in conjunction with the Bill Next Cycle Now feature from section 1.1 above, the system will create two charges in eCommerce. One charge for the prorated 2022 invoice will send with a 2022 billing year, and one charge for the full 2023 invoice will send with a 2023 billing year. The 2023 invoice will be dated 1/1/2023, which may create an AR credit that rolls over from 2022 to 2023. Depending on how many members join your association at the end of the year, you may want to discuss this with your accountant before turning on this setting.
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Late fees are added as a new line item on the original invoice. The late fee line item will have an “invoice date” of the date that the late fee was added. This ensures that you do not unintentionally create new AR activity in a previously closed month.
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Filter Unpaid Invoices to Overdue Association Dues Invoices
By default, this screen lists all open invoices for membership dues. Filter by membership type, invoice date, and tag so that only the correct overdue invoices will receive a late fee:
Membership Types: All association memberships that have local, state, and national dues. (This excludes any MLS or lockbox fees that may be on a different schedule)
Invoice Date: Date used on initial run of association dues invoices. (This excludes any members who have joined recently)
Exclude Tags: Tag created in step 2.2. above. (This excludes any agents who have made alternate plans to pay their membership dues and avoid late fees.)
Add Late Fees to Selected Invoices
Select the fee item you created in step 2.1 above and set the desired price of the late fee. Click Apply Changes to add the late fees. Depending on how many invoices you’re adding late fees totoo, this may take a couple of hours.
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Suspended agents or members can reactivate themselves by paying all open invoices with membership dues-type fee items. No staff action is needed to reactivate a member. GrowthZone will reactivate the member immediately once all required invoices have been paid, but integrated MLS and lockbox services can take up to 90 minutes to receive and process status changes.
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3.4.1 Filter Unpaid Invoices to Overdue Association Dues Invoices
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Memberships> Unpaid tab> Customize Results
By default, this screen lists all open invoices for membership dues. Filter by membership type, invoice date, and tag so that only the agents who have the correct overdue invoices will be dropped:
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3.4.2 Notify Dropped Agents
Memberships> Unpaid tab> Actions> Email Invoices | Print Invoices
Before dropping agents, you may want to notify them that they are no longer a member of your association and are no longer a REALTOR®. It’s important to do this step before dropping the member because if you write off the invoices, you will no longer be able to email or print the invoices from this tab.
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If a broker doesn’t pay their dues and is no longer a REALTOR® who can be responsible for the agents in their office, you may need to suspend their entire office or offices.
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Create a new email list for overdue brokers by clicking on Actions and selecting Add Email List. Enter a name and select a Category. Deselect Show When Unsubscribing so that brokers cannot accidentally remove themselves from this email list. You don’t have to worry about spam rules for these emails since these messages are related to your business relationship with the broker. Click Done to create the list.
Click on the name of your new list, and on the General tab, go to the Synchronize Nightly with Report field and select the name of the report you created in step 4.2.1. Click Save in the top right of the page to save your changes.
Use this email list to send emails and encourage brokers to pay their invoices before you have to suspend them and their office. This list will refresh every night with a list of brokers who have outstanding association dues invoices. As brokers pay their invoices, they will be removed.
4.3 Suspend Offices
4.3.1 Filter Unpaid Invoices to Overdue Broker Invoices
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Memberships> Unpaid tab> Customize Results
By default, this screen lists all open invoices for membership dues. Filter by membership type, invoice date, and tag so that only the agents who have the correct overdue invoices will be dropped:
Membership Types: All broker memberships that have local, state, and national dues
Invoice Date: Date used on the initial run of association dues invoices
(This excludes any brokers who have recently joined)Exclude Tags: Tags added to prevent a broker from being dropped
(Review step 2.2 for more information about excluding contacts by tag)
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Review the listed number of agents and offices that will be suspended to confirm that the number is as you expect. Click Apply Changes to suspend all agents at the affected offices. For every agent in an affected office, the system will apply the service access changes for all membership types defined in step 4.1. Depending on the number of offices you’re suspending, this may take several hours.
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Configure the following filters on the report to filter to payments by brokers:
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Sale Date Range: Today’s date through the date where when your association will drop all unpaid members
Transaction Type: Payment
Additional Criteria: Add a filter by Membership Type Contains. (Pick a word that’s used in all of your broker membership type names. Examples: Primary, Designated, etc…etc.)
Save the report and run it daily to check for payments by brokers. When you see a payment from a broker, click on their name and review their open invoices on the Contacts> Billing tab to see if they have paid all required invoices.
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