The beginning of a new year is a great time to conduct an annual audit of your club procedures. Over time, through data entry errors, membership rate changes, employee turnover and changing membership types, your data can be become inaccurate. An annual housecleaning of your database as well as a review of your daily practices are important – and often overlooked – steps to effectively managing your club.
Let’s take a look at a few procedures that your club should be conducting on a yearly basis.
• Organize your membership types. Generate a report of membership types and corresponding dues amounts. Look for ambiguous data. Paid-infull memberships with corresponding monthly dues and billing information should be a red flag. If you are using the same membership type for different classes of members, you may need to reassign member types – this will help provide you with an accurate picture of future revenues.
• Audit your billing data. Run reports on at least an annual basis to evaluate the accuracy of your billing file – this is a first step to ensuring that you are receiving all monthly dues required. These reports may include:
• No billing info report: You are not receiving monthly dues for any members on this report.
• Credit card expiration dates: Is this information up-to-date? Ask your software/billing provider if they have a credit card updater program to help you keep up with this information, or see if they can handle this critical function for you.
• Status report: Typically, all clients with a status code have a billing problem and you may not be receiving payment from them.
• Consider a rate change. If you are upgrading your club, adding new services, etc., this may warrant a rate change. Use the utility in your club management software that enables you to change EFT rates globally by member type or dues amount – it’s a real time saver.
• Cancel expired paid-in-full members and archive all canceled members. Use your software’s utility that enables you to cancel blocks of expired members by date range – you choose how long you want to wait for renewals to take place before canceling. Once canceled, these members, along with other types of canceled members, can be archived and removed from the member database. Archiving allows you to continue to market to past members while cleaning up your member database.
• Purge old records. Over time, data that was once of value loses its usefulness and should be discarded. Purging utilities should exist in your software to help with this. To speed up your reports, you may wish to purge the following annually:
• Usage: Decide on how many months of back-usage data you actually use, and then purge the rest.
• Old accounts receivable history: Ask your accountant for advice on how many years you need in your archives – this will vary from club to club.
• Prospects: Continually marketing to old prospects may not be cost-effective for you.
• Remove canceled members from your files. An easy way to organize your filing cabinet is to print labels of your current members including their member number and current address. When you re-label the files, you will be updating current member information, and identifying which files to remove at the same time.
• Reassign rep IDs. Whenever a rep leaves, remember to reassign their ID. You should be able to easily manage this through your software. Marketing and member retention mailings should be generated from a dedicated rep. Ensuring that only current reps are active in your database also helps to evenly distribute incoming calls rather than directing all prospect calls to the club manager.
Using your software to help you keep on top of things is just one component of efficient club management. Motivating your team is another. The New Year is a great time to conduct an all-team meeting featuring one of the many motivational speakers available in our industry. A seminar focused on customer service would be a great team builder for managers, owners and staff alike.
Pay special attention to your sales reps. Meet with your sales team to evaluate their performance and set goals for the New Year. Where can they improve? What training or motivational materials could help? Ask for feedback prior to purchasing materials – your team will be more inclined to use the materials if they were involved in choosing them. Consider taking your sales team to a conference this year. What better way to say “thank you” for their outstanding performance, while boosting their industry enthusiasm?
Implementing yearly housekeeping procedures will ensure accurate data and billing. Motivating your team will encourage employee loyalty and lead to increased revenue in the coming year. Doing both of these now will help to ensure that your club is ready for a great 2007. Happy New Year!
Kate Dumas is a Sales Associate with Twin Oaks Software. She can be contacted at 866.278.6750 x296, or by email atkdumas@tosd.com, or visit www.tosd.com.
