bill highway
 

are any of you familiar with bill highway? zta has recently gone with that system of receiving members payments and paying bills. last month i sent in payment for my daughters dues -there is the option to pay in full for the semester or make a monthly payment and i paid in full-and i got an invoice in the mail today that acknowledges that they received the paytment, but they are also billing me for one months dues. i am not impressed!!

We're getting underway with it. Getting underway with any new sort of billing system is not fun. Hopefully all the bugs will be ironed out soon.

Bill Highway-UGH!!!!
 

:confused:At Penn State we are now using Bill Highway...Yes, I agree-it can be stupid to an extent...I had the same problem...The way I understand this-and if I'm wrong-please someone correct me....Even if you pay in full you will still get an invoice each month to show it is taken out in installments (Mainly for YOUR records more so than theirs)....So, even if you get the thing asking for more money...that initial payment page that confirmed your payment should have been printed out by you....it doesn't mean you didn't pay when they send you those things...it means they send those out to everyone to show what is being paid for.....I graduated already (May 2007) so, it's something I used for about a year or so...If you have any questions in regards to it...you can probably call them....

ASA just started using billhighway recently. I actually have a training manual on it and know a fairly good deal on it. If you have any questions, you can pm me and I'll see if I can look them up.

thanks to all your responses. our international office emailed me and indeed bill highway still sends a monthly invoice, even if the bill is paid in full-i find that annoying!!

maybe if enough parents complain from enough groups using bill highway they, will change it. fingers crossed!

We've been on it for a little more than 2 years... it has come a long way since our NO first enlisted all our chapters in it, but it definitely has a long way to go. They are pretty responsive to parent/student/chapter complaints - we've had success with getting several new options added, so I'd recommend writing them a letter. (or email - which it takes them a few days to answer) As the rep told us one night when we had her troubleshooting - they can't help and make it better if they don't know that people are having issues or unhappy with it.

Just remember, the reason all of these bill paying companies have sprung up is because members do not pay their bills so some force is needed to collect the money.

Those who do not pay are hardships for the rest.:o

Some may be good and some may be bad, but as I said, they came about for a reason.

I'm not sure that's the only reason....not every chapter has a sister or two who's good at this sort of money-stuff to run for treasurer. I never knew how excrutiatingly bad some people were at math until I got the job I have and saw grown men & women freaking out over simple addition & subtraction.

But yeah, collections is definitely part of it.

I am a new treasurer and need help!! Where can I get a training manual? It would be much appreciated!

My chapter uses bill highway and I find it to be just a pain as far as user interface is concerned.

The monthly invoice is new to me though. Somehow we prepay and don't get any more invoices. I know that if your dues are $100/mo. (I wish, but for even numbers lets just say they are) and you pay $200 for 1 month. The next month it will deduct the remaining credit with another invoice.

I believe we have it set up to have a separate payment option for pre pay. You pay one and are done. Maybe the interface is not as bad as I think but I only touch it twice a year.

Bill highway is the devil. I'm so glad I'm alum now. Honestly, I tried to help my lil sister by paying some of her dues and I called and wanted to pay a portion of what she owed by credit card and even though some of it was past due (and in Phi Mu you're supposed to be able to pay only past due items with CC) it wouldn't let me pay anything but the full amount. Well, I didn't have the ability to do that and so I ended up paying a portion with a check, but what a pain! It took me like 30 minutes to get anything done. I wish that HQ would allow us to pay with CC. I understand they don't want us to go in debt or whatever (and if that's not the reason please let me know cos I'd LOVE to know why!), but if you can pay past due items with a card then what's the point?! On top of that, you can't even use your check card, which comes out of your bank account anyway! And god forbid a parent wants to pay with their card! That is the most foolish thing. I am so glad to be done with it. We had a lot of Phis this year who held off paying things because they didn't want to deal with this system! (eventually they had to though).

The reason that you cannot use credit cards on billhighway is because they are still a relatively small business, so their credit card processing fees are high. When a bill is 5 or more days past due, you are assessed a 2.5% fee but can pay by credit card then. This fee goes to cover the cost of the credit card transaction.

The no debit card thing is something I questioned too as I think there are many college age students who just don't HAVE checks or use them - everything is paying online or with debit cards. I really think that billhighway should provide money orders for this purpose (so you don't have to go to 7-11 & pay some ridiculous amount for them).

Speaking from a finance officer's standpoint I have to say that billhighway is a godsend. I know that some collegians are not happy with it, but when a new treasurer calls me hysterically with questions about their account, it helps that I can log in and see all of their chapter's cash flow for the past semester.

Well when I call billhighway to pay with my card (for late items only cos that's all they allow) they specifically say that my organization does not allow it (They won't let me pay any less then the total cost! Even if I want to put a significant amount). Although once it did let me pay $15 on my card...(I don't get it!)

If they really just can't take credit card cos they are so small even though I know many chapters have it and many orgs. force it on chapters as a whole (so they should have some money by now), then they are just sh*tty. Even the tiniest restaurant at the mall takes CC on orders of $3 or more!

I'm sure their services are very good as far as helping the treasurers, but for pete's sake they need to improve it on the paying person's side. There have to be other services who offer the same chapter financial analysis at a glance without all of this BS. National organizations should only settle for the best because APH seems like it's the cheap route out of all the companies seeing as how they offer less convenience. But I'm glad it works for you, cos it didn't work too good for me. (And don't get me started on selecting the invoices for payment...what a mess!)

I tried for a week to pay my daughter's dues. The system wouldn't recognize her social with 3 various zips (home, dorm. chapter house). It wouldn't recognize her email and our common pw. At this point, I was wonderiong if she quit and didn't tell me. Finally, I found a phone number and we discovered that her email was wrong. Someone else has been getting statements etc. I'm sure the treasurer thought both of us were thick. She kept emailing these simple instructions and we kept saying we couldn't figure it out. I hope it all gets straightened out. I paid using the incorrect email after speaking to them on the phone. I have never seen an invoice or receipt. They are going to an email address that is one letter off.

What really bugs me about Bill Highway is that there's no way to override a charge once it's been submitted. Using two examples from my chapter: one sister missed an informal recruitment event and was fined. The even that she missed carried a $25 fine, but the treasurer accidentally keyed it in as a formal recruitment event, and it came to a $100 fine. She protested the fine, but all we could do was pay her back the $75.

In another case, a sister's bank account was hacked into, and she had a good deal of money stolen from her account at the same time a payment was due. We couldn't override or delay it, and she ended up having to pay late fees because there was no way she could pay by the due date. (I keep saying 'we' because I was on executive council during the times these issues came up). It might be great for the treasurer, but it's a real pain for the other members.

Having never seen them, is it possible these are statements? Many vendors send out monthly statements that look like invoices. Especially when there is a credit on the account. And some vendors may do so even if there is a zero balance and/or no activity.

Any more recent experiences with BillHighway, either from the treasurer's perspective or the payee's perspective?

I can't give the payer or treasurer perspective, but I'm quite familiar with it from a chapter management perspective. What are you seeking to know?

That's a great perspective, too. Did it make chapter management easier or more challenging? What kind of functionality does it provide for chapter management?

I'm familiar from the payee perspective since my daughter's chapter used it. It was convenient for me to pay her chapter dues using it. She had to pay for her own t-shirts, formal tickets, etc. It was nice for both of us to be able the account to take care of it! I liked it

I am extremely familiar with Billhighway from all perspectives. Alpha Phi chapter's have been using it since 2012.

Same here, I'm the financial adviser for two chapters and I like BH - I can get in there and run reports to keep track of things and pull information out that I need to work on budgets and various forms as well as approve checks and prepaid card load requests.

From a chapter management perspective, it's a great way to get a quick view of how chapters are spending their money - or not spending it (which often has a direct correlation with areas of chapter life and health). Getting an eye view of collections can often signal issues with member engagement/retention early on.

The reporting functions are great - but it does require a bit of training (or knowledge of accounting systems) to harness that power.

We are using billhighway at Old Dominion. It can be a PITA. I also used it to pay my goddaughter's Chi O dues at her school too