Preparing for Q4 REALTOR® Billing and COE Cycle 6 End
With many REALTOR® customers preparing for their annual billing (not all do their annual billing in Oct, but many), the product/development teams have been making a large push to implement key features, ensuring a smooth billing cycle. We want to keep you up-to-speed on the details on some of these features and why we are excited.
Listen to our ProdCast (aka our first Product Podcast!)
Hear why the product team is excited about the features (listed below) that are coming soon or have recently released, and how they all fit together.
Invoices Prior to Autopay
Why:
GrowthZone customers and their members want insight and control of the autopay process. The new feature creates a user experience aligned with what our members are used to seeing on their credit card or utility autopayment - the details of the upcoming payment before it happens.
What:
At it’s core, the Invoice Before Autopayment is about separating the processes that generate invoices from the process that charges payment profiles for those invoices. There is a now a setting in Finance > General Settings called “Invoice before Autopayment”
Invoices Prior to Charging Cards - Important Links:
Advanced Billing Settings
Why:
Providing customers more control over the dates associated with billing allows them to maintain good data while meeting their business rules.
What:
When running upcoming billing (Billing -> Upcoming Billing tab), enable Advanced Options to set the following parameters for all invoices created as part of the billing run:
Invoice Date | Due Date | Invoice Template | Invoice Terms | Invoice Message
This is great for customers who have fixed renewal memberships but want to date invoices several months in advance of the fixed renewal date.
Examples: A Real Estate Association's Agent membership type renews in January but the association wants to date the renewal invoices 9/15/21. When running upcoming billing, set the Invoice Date to 9/15 to override the default 1/1 invoice date conferred by the Renew Everyone on January 1st membership setting.
Advanced Billing Settings - Links and Noteworthy items:
Noteworthy Point:
- This work is currently available for all and ready to be used.
Improved Info Hub Payment Experience
Why:
REALTOR Association members need to easily access their dues, and make the necessary payments - despite how large of customer they are.
What:
Info Hub updates will be made to the recently added 'My Billing Info' left hand menu item, Members will be able to filter and search using various options to get down to the invoices they wish to pay - only their invoices, by invoice #, by membership type, by contact name etc. Clicking the Make a Payment button, will carry that list of filtered invoices on to the checkout page where they'll have a much simpler payment experience.
In addition to more filtering, these changes will significantly improve the performance for those with a larger list of invoices.
FAQ:
Who will this be available to?
Any tenant who has the "Use the new My Billing Info tab" enabled under Setup>Finance>General Settings. will have the ability to experience the new payment improvements. Our initial deployment will be limited to a small subset of customers so it can be tested using an additional setting that will show under the In Dev tag, but after that, we will remove the setting which will provide anyone who has the new My Billing Info tab to have the improved experience.
Info Hub Billing - Important Links and Noteworthy Items:
Noteworthy Point:
- The first phase of this rolled out in June, and that can be turned on at any time, if its not already
- This phase 2 (noted to the left) is currently being worked on by development. Pushing hard for Oct 5th release, but it will be close.
Payment Plans
Why:
Some local real estate associations offer payment plans to retain members who may not be able to pay all of their membership dues at once. Agents often have peaks and valleys in their income and a payment plan can help the association retain a member who would otherwise have to drop. This is even more important for associations with local competition. A smooth payment plan experience can be the difference between keeping a member or losing them to a competitor offering a transfer discount and a way to float their dues until they make another sale.
What:
Payment plans are a frequently requested feature of our REALTOR® associations. This feature allows for a membership to be billed outside of our traditional payment frequencies (annual, quarterly, etc.). It also empowers the association to define the allotted amount of each line item that will be represented in the defined invoices.
Payment Plans - Important Links and Noteworthy Items:
Noteworthy Points:
- Payment Plans can ONLY be turned on by GZ staff
- Please note the Prerequisites in the KB article.
Broker Tab
Why:
Our REALTOR® customer need to be able to communicate effectively and concisely with their Broker Members. A single broker could have multiple offices and many, many agents as part of their brokerage.
What:
We've created a page that allows back office staff to review their membership base with the Broker as the head of a brokerage. The new Broker tab, found in the Membership Module, displays information, such as: the broker, their office(s), their agents, and all the open membership invoices associated with that broker.
An association staff person will be able to filter the information based on the type of membership e.g. MLS membership or REALTOR can send statements and communication to the Broker based on the filtering.
Unlike the Grouped Statement, this can be sent to the Broker rather than an office and allows for a Broker with multiple offices to receive one statement.
Broker Tab - Important Links and Noteworthy Items:
Noteworthy Points:
- This feature is currently behind the in dev flag, under user settings.
- For existing customer, User Roles need to be setup - see the knowledge base article for more details
- This feature is Real Estate Edition specific
Code of Ethics Automation
Why:
All agents are required to complete a qualifying code of ethics class by the end of 2021. If an agent does not complete a class they will be suspended and eventually have their membership terminated. It’s important for the system to track this information and make it easy for local associations to contact agents who have not completed a class so that they do not lose members.
What:
Event staff can add a continuing education component to an event to give attendees credit for completing their code of ethics requirement. The system will also update NRDS with this information. Event staff can also use this to provide credit for events that have already happened.
A new code of ethics report will allow association staff to email agents who haven’t yet completed a class or add these agents to a smart list or marketing automation workflow. A new action on the Brokers tab will let staff email the brokers and office managers of agents who haven’t yet completed a class.
FAQ:
Can this add code of ethics records to members who have attended an event several months ago but do not have that information in NRDS yet?
Yes, adding a component with the COEC or COEN code to an event will update NRDS with the event’s date/time and appropriate code even though the attendees were already marked as attended.
What should an association be aware of when emailing agents who haven’t yet completed their code of ethics?
We recently learned that agents who have completed a C2EX certification with NAR do not have to complete a separate code of ethics class. These agents may not have any code of ethics records for the 3 year period ending 12/31/2021 but will not be suspended.
Agents who have REALTOR® Emeritus status with NAR are also exempt from completing code of ethics courses.
Code of Ethics Automation Noteworthy Items:
- This feature is still being developed, but expected to release prior to Sept 28th.
Other Great Improvements REALTORS® May Care About
Tracking for Emailed Invoices
Check out the Teams post.
Ability to Accomplish Multi-Factor Authentication
through Azure Active Directory
Check out the KB article.
Force Login for Donation Page
Check out the teams post.
Login to the MemberPlus App via Email Address (or SSO)
Check out the KB article.
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