Image Credit: Tax Credits
Let's face it -- it costs money above and beyond what the government is willing to provide a senator's office with to meet all of the needs of the people who will come knocking on your doors this year. Think about all of the extra services that your office provides that have additional fees: casework, flag requests, academy nominations, access to federal government resources, federal grant funding, and visiting Washington D.C.
Collecting these fees can be very difficult to do. No, you really don't want to be charging the fees in the first place, but you have to because the office does not have the budget to cover these activities for everyone who wants them. Now the real challenge shows up: collecting the money from the citizens who want the services in a timely fashion. If you don't do a good job of doing this, then your office's budget is going to become upside down very, very quickly.. Can something be done to solve this problem?
Use Your Senator's Website To Collect Fees
Senator's office are faced with a real problem when it comes to collecting fees. In most cases, the fees are going to be paid by the a citizen who may not realize that a fee is due. The traditional method of placing a note on your website or sending an email to the person who is making the request and then hoping that it gets into the hands of the person who will pay it clearly is not working for a lot of senate offices. A better solution is needed.
It turns out that most senator's offices probably have already taken the first steps in creating a solution to this problem by establishing websites for their senators. These websites have become a focal point for visitors to come to in order to get information about what is going in the office and, in terms of fees, what fees they may owe for a given service.
As powerful a tool as a senator's website is, in many cases it may not be up to the task of collecting fees from visitors. The list of challenges can be quite lengthy; however, it includes creating a process that allows secure payments via the website, the ability to place all collected funds into the appropriate bank account, and the ability to individually contact visitors who owe fees.
HillTop Provides You With The Best Fee Collection Solution
So what's a senator's office to do? One of the best solutions that a senator's office can implement is to select and deploy HillTop Senator website system. HillTop is different from all other website systems in so much that it creates websites that can talk to each other. Additionally, HillTop websites have been optimized to help senator's websites collect fees from visitors safely and securely.
The first thing that HillTop does is allow your senator's website to interact with a 3rd party firm that will allow your website to process credit card and debit card payments via the web. Yes, this means that if you really want to use PayPal to do all of this, HillTop Will allow you to do so. However, here at GSL Solutions we're betting that that may not be the route that you want to go. We've entered into a partnership with The Bank of America and we can now offer you a better rate for processing your credit cards and we can also ensure that every transaction will be automatically deposited into your senate office's checking account. That's right, the treasurer will no longer have to be burdened with the task of moving funds between accounts as they come in!
A very important point to keep in mind is that when a senator's office is collecting a fee, there is also often a lot of additional information that goes along with that fee. HillTop provides each Senate office with the ability to create forms that can be used as a larger part of fee collection. Each form can be quickly and easily created by a website administrator to collect both the specific information that will be required to go along with the fee as well as collecting the fee itself. Talk about one-stop shopping!
HillTop Is A Solution That Pays For Itself Quickly
Getting the funds that are associated with visitor fees is a critical issue for senate offices. The office will have to cover the funds even if the visitors don't pay it. Sure, you can have people mail cash, checks, and probably even coins to you, but who wants to be responsible for counting and storing all of that money?
A much better way to collect the fees that your office needs would be to implement HillTop solution. The cost of the HillTop solution would quickly be earned back as visitors started to make their required payments online.
Additionally, the lower payment transaction fees that using The Bank of America collection system would provide a Senate office would also allow the office to very quickly move into the red. Using HillTop to collect fees for your office just makes good sense.
The Next Session Starts Soon -- Move Quickly To Solve Your Fee Collection Problems
More often than not a visitor is willing to pay a fee before the event has occurred. However, if these fees are not collected in a timely fashion, then it can become much harder for an office to acquire them. What will happen is that everyone's attention will start to drift to other things and visitors will forget what they owe.
Using HillTop to provide your office with a great looking website is a smart move. HillTop's built-in fee collection capabilities allows you to quickly and efficiently collect fees from visitors before an event happens. The ability to easily use your office's website to collect form information along with event fees will help your office to connect with the citizens that you serve.
This all starts with you picking up the phone and calling GSL Solutions (888.473.0255) to find out more about HillTop or contacting them via email (http://www.hilltopcms.com/demo-request). No matter how you choose to do it, get started now. Your voters deserve to have the most powerful technology put to work in your senator's office in a way that will benefit both them and you. Get started today!
- Dr. Jim Anderson
HillTop –
Political Web Sites That Get The Vote!™
GSL Solutions' HillTop service provides politicians with a way to get voters more involved with the political process. HillTop has been designed by politicians, for politicians in order to provide easy-to-use tools that make updating a political website with current and topical information easy to do. The website becomes a powerful communication tool between the politician and the voters. More information can be found at: www.HillTopCMS.com.
Tags: fees, collection, senator's website, checking account, deposits, political web site, campaign, voters, reelected, issues