It has occurred to me since writing the post entitled “Potential Answer to Lodge Dues Administration? FreshBooks” that perhaps I did not touch on various issues. I know I only posted that last post this morning but it’s been a long day in my mental head-space.
The number one thing people will say is, “well we only collect money from everyone once a year; We don’t need a system like this”. My response is simple. If you don’t need this system then good for your lodge, you should pat yourself on the back. Many lodges are constantly after their lodge members to pay dues and follow-up on them. An online system such as FreshBooks or the even more comprehensive MORI system Mark is considering for individual lodges, would automate much of the work and not allow for as many dropped balls. It would make the job of tracking dues and other invoice-able requests less of a nightmare and more like “fun”. (Yes, I put fun in quotations as it may not be everyone’s definition of fun.)
Furthermore, these online solutions allow lodges to link up dues payments with paypal or other payment gateways and allow members to pay online from their bank accounts or even from their credit cards. No postage stamps or printing at all. Insteaad of looking at the cost of the software, imagine the savings in printing and postage, not to mention quicker collections and less fuss. Take the Secretary out of the collections business and treat him with a program that will do it for him, equitably and systematically.
Give your secretary a break… Hire a computer program to help them. How much do you pay them anyway? Don’t they deserve it? Just asking…
Next week, I will review computer programs to automate the Tyler position. (Joking! Just checking if you were still reading and paying attention.) Although a lodge computer tracking membership status across the jurisdiction, in the hands of a Tyler, would be useful wouldn’t it? Hmmm…..
Thanks for the tip. When first drafted to be Secretary three years ago, I digitized our Lodge records using the antiquated “Lodge Secretary” program. Since the Grand Lodge uses Excel, I went with the old, Excel powered software because it could be populated instantly with an email from the Grand Lodge. The software is, at least, sufficient in keeping track of our membership and cash flows. With that database, I’m able to paste the membership to other compatible programs.
I would like to update to new software with a few neato features, but I certainly wouldn’t want the Lodge to pay $25 per month to replace something which works fine now…albeit not pretty.
My goal as Secretary was to make the job easy and fast enough so we could have a new brother in that position every two years without too much learning curve overlap. The old program is, if nothing else, simple enough for anyone to use in its limited capacity. So, we’ll be ready to upgrade when we’re sure the new program is simple and inexpensive enough.
Thank you for your reply. I’m glad to hear you have a good system in place. I’d say the learning curve on the program mentioned in this string, namely FreshBooks, has a very easy learning curve. The price I can’t get around unless you value online payments, automated reminders, e-mail delivery, etc… But I’ll be the first to admit it isn’t for every lodge. In fact, I think Shane is about to unleash a new post shortly that may interest you. Keep an eye open here for his next post.
I use Harvest for my own invoicing and billing and I have to agree that the on-line programs to do this are definitely a boon.
At the moment, I’m secretary of my lodge and also having an IT background of going on 20 years was a bit perturbed about the state of records at my lodge (Most was on paper and the ones that were digitized were in a badly maintained WordPerfect document!). As a band-aid, until I could find something better, a brother from another lodge adapted an Access application for our use, but it’s temperamental at best, and near useless at worst.
And since the Lodge Secretary doesn’t look to be getting updated as much as I’d like and the cost of custom development is too high, I’m looking to develop something myself in FileMaker. If anything, it’ll avoid the monthly cost of a great service like FreshBooks (since, like you mentioned the craft doesn’t like re-occuring monthly costs 😉 and I can definitely have a lot of flexibility in getting data into and out of FileMaker with an SQL backend.
At least, that’s the plan. So far, finding the time to get up to speed in Filemaker is proving a challenge, but on the brightside it’s one of the easier RAD’s out there.
I’m glad I found your blog through The Scottish Rite Journal. This is definitely how a Masonic blog should be like. I’ll be subscribing to your feed for sure.
PS: Have you considered doing a bit about lodges deploying PBX software to help automate/manage their phone systems?)
Renegade,
Thank you for your comment.
I will look into the PBX system. I have some knowledge of these programs. Perhaps that is an article in the near future.
If you find our info interesting I encourage you to use our “share” button on the bottom of each post to tell your lodge members about our website. It is an easy way to spread the word 😉
Dean
Will do! If you need any information on the PBXes, I’ve already implemented one for Eola lodge and it’s working great. Feel free to e-mail me and I can tell you more about it.