Trying to renew my membership ...

I would love to renew my annual membership but have been informed that if I pay via bank transfer or cheque 4N will charge me another £20 admin fee!!  

My personal company credit card only has a £500 limit .....Aarrgghhh.

Not happy 

V x

or go onto monthly £44+vat 

Why would the admin charge apply for BACS transfers?

Totally with you on charging for cheques. They were a complete pain in the bum when we ran the hotel (esp as we were not in a town). This was especially the case when we had 4N members wanting to pay their ten quid breakfast fee with a cheque! Cheques are dead.

However, I can't follow the logic on BACS transfers. If the internal system is set up correctly, the effort is absolutely tiny. More importantly, 4N would get 100% of the cash and not be paying a credit card fee. On an annual renewal, that could be a saving of a tenner, or more over credit cards!!

I would strongly urge having another look at making BACS payments acceptable without a charge.

Guys

BACS is good but currently the membership has to be processed manually by 4N so there is admin - unlike CC which is all auto - we will look at this going forward

Victoria

Monthly could be the best option for you £44 plus VAT

No, actually Gordon, I would have to disagree

Dependent on whether Victoria is VAT registered, the cost for £44/month is £29 or £34.8 compared to £20 for a cheque (sorry to be a pedant)

- although that does ignore the flexibility, benefits of spreading cost etc..

Graham is, of course, 100% correct. The 44/month option costs more than the annual + 20 cheque charge.

I am staggered that "admin" is being used as a reason for charging someone to pay by BACS. I mean, seriously? There has to be something fundamentally wrong with an accounting system that cannot handle a BACS receipt with a maximum of 2 minutes of admin, even if it is a manual system. As I said, it doesn't attract any credit card charges, so it MUST be the more profitable option, even allowing for the admin.

I'm with Steve on this one - BACS + a little bit of Admin can't be more expensive than Credit Cards surely?

How many major online shops do you know that let you pay by BACS?  There could be a few but I don't know any.

I handle hundreds of cheques, BACS and PayPal payments for an organisation that I am membership secretary for.  Auto via Paypal through the site is the way we are heading which means they get through with accurate details.

There are problems with cheques (which Brad has highlighted) such as no reference number, not signed, wrong amount, cheque not from member so can't reconcile! etc. which cause problems but I have similar with BACS payments.

I have already stopped standing orders as they never get updated and often have no reference or an incorrect reference.

I am just about to stop members paying by BACS because they often do not put on a reference or their name is not complete due to the bank using their middle name etc.  The truth is BACS payments need manually reconciling and are time consuming too.

For membership systems with large numbers of members then online payments are the best thing for the organisation and best for the member who can get instant response (which is what they expect).

It is good to keep offering cheques as an alterantive but the cheapest method for the member to use - is their card.  They need to pay for the posage for a cheque.

Agree with that Paul, it's pretty simple, credit cards = no admin, cheques & BACS = admin, how much admin depends on the person making the payment and 4N can't be expected to individually cost that out every time because that would = more admin!  £20 is fair and not unreasonable.