Let’s Get it On(line)
Is your board constantly faced with residents who don’t pay their monthly HOA fees on time? Or, is it a monthly inconvenience for the board member who must figure out who has paid, collect checks and deposit them all?
A property owner in a coastal HOA recalls, “Our whole community is second homes. No one has dues payment—much less depositing in the HOA account—as a priority. One year all of our checks were returned uncashed, because the treasurer never got around to depositing them! We needed a simpler way to keep up the HOA account.”
Many homeowners associations are still using traditional check payment methods. Not only does this take up a lot of time and slow down your cash flow, but it can also cause inconvenience to your residents. An online portal for HOA dues makes sense to keep accounts current and easy for members to make payments. The availability of electronic payments is routine—and almost expected—because of the convenience it offers. It can provide numerous advantages for residents, the homeowners association, the environment, and for future resale of homes in your community.
Members want to quickly pay their HOA fees with ease.
If you start collecting HOA fees online, it means faster dues payment, fewer late payments, and less delinquency. Once they have set up their account, they no longer have to worry about lost checks or late payments due to slow mail service. They also won’t have to remember the date each month the assessment is due, and they’ll have fees paid on time. Not only does this save residents time and postage, but it can also eliminate late fees.
Also, they will begin to view HOA fees as a part of their typical bills rather than a massive inconvenience each month. If this element can be automated for HOAs, it will have a substantial impact on residents’ overall satisfaction. Who isn’t for less griping?
Online payment is also beneficial for the homeowners association.
It improves cash flow, reduces delinquencies and decreases bank charges which in turn helps keep assessments down. When you collect HOA fees online, it also becomes easier to track all the payments. You will gain access to an online database that you can use to keep track of which residents have paid and which residents have not.
It lightens the load on the volunteer board.
HOA board members spend a lot of time collecting checks, processing checks, and going to the bank. This time can be better used for more important community matters. HOA boards will have far less work related to keeping track of residents’ payments and account management with an online portal.
There are benefits for the environment too.
If just 20 percent of households in the U.S. switched to electronic bill payments, 100 million pounds of paper would be eliminated from the manufacturing process—saving 1.4 billion gallons of waste water and 103 million gallons of fuel to deliver it. In fact, a 20 percent reduction in production and transportation of bills, statements and checks would spare the atmosphere two million tons of greenhouse gas a year.
And another thing
Your community will become much more appealing to potential homeowners, and to the mortgage companies that review HOAs for their borrower’s purchase. They will see that your HOA actually makes an effort to better the lives of its residents.
So, with an online payment system, you can become more effective in managing the HOA. But you still have to have the know-how and resources to set it up! HOAs stick with traditional check payments because they think an online system is costly and time-consuming to set up. If your community set up and ran a portal, it might be time consuming to set up and maintain the technology. With MicroHOA’s small HOA management service, your community will have its own dedicated portal—for payments, and much more. Owners will have access to payment and account information, as well as community records and documents that they will need to sell or refinance. Not only are the finances managed by MicroHOA, but the portal tech is too…no worries for you.
