When evaluating billing services for your martial arts school, there are a few main points you really want to consider:
1) Cost.
2) Integrated with your student management software
3) Does it offer both EFT & CC
First, cost is an obvious one. Some martial arts billing companies will charge upwards of 10 for their services. Naturally, when you see pricing in the 3 range you begin to think that you’re missing out on some core services by going with the cheaper option. But the reality is that you’re not missing out on hardly anything at all. We go into more detail in our article “Being the “bad guy” of billing”, but the gist of it is that by going with a billing company, you’re missing out on about 5 of your revenue because you didn’t want to have 1 2 conversations a month with students about billing. From the pure instructor viewpoint it’s nice to not have to deal with these, but from a business point of view this is a terrible trade of time for cash. Really look closely at how much you’re paying for your billing services and what you get out of it. 9 times out of 10 you’ll be better off with the cheaper option.
Next is the integration with your management software. Your software is the heart & soul of your business. It knows who your students are, attendance, rank, test times and a whole lot more if you got a good one. By integrating billing with this software, you are getting a complete view of your students and where they stand. Now all your reporting on students can get into detail like, “All blackbelts who are late on their payments the last two months”. Blackbelts are typically your best students and you really want to pay attention if they’re about to leave or having financial issues. Best of all, when you enroll a new student, just enter their EFT or CC information into the software, select the day of the month they’re supposed to pay, and your software will automate the entire billing process for you! You’ll be amazed at how may more payments you’re able to collect and how much easier this is on both you and your students.
In just about any case, your cost of EFT is going to be cheaper than credit cards, but you never want to fully rule credit cards out. It’s undoubted that some of your students will insist on paying by credit card every month and you don’t want to have to turn them away. You REALLY don’t want to hassle with collecting a paper check from them each month because you couldn’t automate their tuition with a credit card. Save yourself some hassle and be sure to find a service that offers both.
In part 2 of this article, we’ll cover the two crucial pieces you shouldn’t go without when choosing a system to automate your martial arts school billing!
For a free consultation on how you can improve your martial arts billing practices, email us info@experiencemartialarts.com or visit our website at http://www.experiencemartialarts.com.
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