Ideas for dues/information
 

I am currently treasurer of my sorority and our finance system is below par. I have looked into online services and actually began to use it for the chapter, which so far has been going great. My question is how do you all set up when dues are due? We currently do not have a system and most people rack up a lot of money owed and pay it off at the end of the semester which makes it very hard to collect any "spending" money.
Also, girls order t-shirts and miscellaneous items and wait to pay for that as well is there any way to enforce paying for those items within a certain time period?

Thanks!

You might need to overhaul your financial policies (in conjunction with your finance council/exec committee, however your sorority is set up to change policies). It sounds like you need some firm deadlines for dues and other payments. When I was an undergrad, dues were due monthly at the first chapter. If we bought extra stuff, such as party pics or t-shirts, payment was due at the time of the order. If we didn't pay when we ordered, our name was dropped from the order. You also need set consequences when sisters are delinquent in finances. If a sister is delinquent in payments, she is not in good standing and therefore loses some of the privileges of membership. This includes social probation, loss of voting privileges, being sent to standards board, etc. If someone owes you a significant amount of money, then perhaps they are dropped from the active membership and sent to collections.

We were on the quarter system and most people paid their dues in full the second chapter meeting of each quarter. If you were on a payment plan, you usually had 3 payments in the quarter, beginning with that second chapter and then every 2 weeks. We didn't have many problems, but sisters who weren't up to date on their payments couldn't attend any sorority events until they were. You could even take this up a notch--if it is required to attend chapter meetings and there is any kind of consequence for not attending (a fine, not going to events, whatever), then don't allow sisters who aren't up to date with payments to attend meeting.

With shirts, paraphernalia, etc. it's pretty simple--they don't get the item until they have paid for it. And yes, if they don't pay at the time of order for something that's ordered in advance, don't order their item. They'll learn quickly.

Perhaps you or another exec member should give a little chat to the chapter about how it's not fair to wait to pay until the end--if they want events, they need to pay, you can't do anything without money, whatever.