Some scholarship applicants have provided feedback that they would like to opt into a payment plan/installments for program fees, rather than receive a scholarship.

I know donations are a different type - but this functionality would be extremely applicable for donors, especially as we're thinking about mid-level memberships in the future. being able to offer the option to make 4 payments to achieve a $500 level (for example) would be much more approachable for grass-roots type giving.

I think this could be incredibly benefical not only for youth clubs, but also has the potential to be used for adult courses. Might make courses a little more approachable and could aid in our E&I initiatives.

For youth clubs this will take less time to process payments, but will also reduce the human error in processing payments

I second everything Elaine said in her comment - having an automated way to collect payments from youth clubs families is an extremely obvious, common sense solution to all of the problems she mentioned, which have become very aggravating and time consuming this summer.

This would be an incredible asset to the youth programs for a number of reasons. First, Member Services manually processes payments, which takes approximately 3-5 hours every time we process them. We have been doing this for the past several years on a monthly basis, and are now moving to a quarterly system because the amount of time it takes Member Services has become a burden and has taken away from our ability to respond to other requests in a timely manner. In addition to the significant labor, card numbers on paper forms frequently are inaccurate/expire, requiring staff to contact the family. It often requires multiple phone calls or emails to the family to acquire a new card number, and significantly delays the payment process (in some cases by up to 6 months because of poor communication from the family and the challenge of staff having to regularly follow up). Missed payments can accumulate and become a financial burden for the family, and the budgeting/accounting for youth programs becomes inaccurate and confusing. Lastly, with the paper filing system we've had issues with forms not making it to member services, and therefore families never getting charged, and having to pay everything at the end of the club cycle. Having an automated monthly/quarterly payment system could potentially allow for the family to be automatically notified when their cards are declined (and therefore a way for them to update online rather than calling), staff to also be automatically notified when their cards are declined, safer payment information storage, more consistent revenue flow, and reduced staff labor.

Cheryl,

This is explained in the status update that is just below each idea. Here is is:

Please see the IT Planning & Prioritization sheet, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x1_tMuGpZZC4-xxyiDTzALvnbSPn2SJz3FveQQuyfmY/edit?usp=sharing, for where this project is ranked among other projects.

This could be accomplished with either of these two projects, “Organizations & Online Invoicing” and “Monthly Payment System.”

Jeff

I can't seem to find this idea, or the very good modification to the idea from Jeff below, anywhere on the planning and prioritization sheet. Where did it go?

User Story: As a parent registering my child for a youth program, allow me to choose to pay the full amount, or automatically pay in equal monthly installments from this month through the last month of the program with a credit card so that staff need not keep credit card info on file (security risk) and process these cards manually every month.

Note: Though specifically requested for our youth programs, this payment system could be used for any program of sufficient length and cost.

We have a general need for an online invoice system that is capable of collecting multiple payments for one item. Areas of need include our Program Centers, Youth Program and Global Adventures. We do need a discovery effort to determine all of our areas of needs and the details of those needs so we can design and implement the best solution.

In addition, there is a change to their “IT iteration request” from having just two fields for entry in courses and activities – a choice of deposit payment amount or final payment amount. They no longer think this will work and you can close that request. What they’d like to see, is a field where a participant may enter an amount themselves to be paid. So, the IT iteration request is to change the mandated “price” or “deposit” or “final payment” to instead allow the participant to input the price they want to pay. The reason for this, and I think it’s a good one, is because different participants pay different amounts. For example, if a participant were to stay an extra night in a location, they are charged a different amount (additional lodging or whatnot) than other participants. If a field were created for input of an amount to be paid, this would solve the GA problem, and GA participants would no longer need to call up member services to make GA payments. Instead they could just pay on the website.