Group Sales managers:
This is more of a process question than a system question-- How do you ensure/ enforce groups to pay their balance on time?
Museum of the Bible "requires" that groups pay their balance 2 weeks before arrival, but that doesn't always happen. We don't really have a consequence in place for groups who don't pay on time because we don't want to turn anyone away. Thus, we have many groups not paying until day-of, or (even worse) putting their check in the mail so late that we haven't received it yet by the day of their visit.
What do your organizations do to put your groups feet to the fire a little bit for paying their balance on time?
Thanks,
Shelly Binkley
Hi Shelly,
For most groups orders, we send a contract that must be signed with the general information about group sales and, most importantly, a line stating that they are aware that if payment is not received on time that we have the right to release the tickets. The date of final payment is listed (in bold) on the contract and on the invoice we send them. If they are late, we give them one phone call and one email past the date to get us the money and if it doesn't arrive, we release the tickets and keep the non-refundable deposit they make to maintain the reservation.
Happy to send over our contract for you to see if that would be helpful!
Emily
In my experience, we mostly are dealing with getting payments from public schools. In these cases, often the teachers who order are passing these unpaid invoices to their finance office, which adds to delays. Asking for the finance office contact info to follow up with them directly has helped us. It takes more work than it should, sadly.
Thanks, Ryan!
We set a due date of 30 days before the performance, which gives us a little more time to follow up with delinquent payments (though we are usually pretty flexible with school groups and groups booked closer to the show date). In our group sales invoice, it says we will charge the remaining balance to the card on file if the payment is not submitted by the due date, but I can't think of any instances where we've actually followed through with that policy during my time here.
-Arielle
Hi Emily,
If the offer stands, I'd really appreciate taking a look at your contract. This is also an issue we've been discussing, and I wonder if seeing something from another NY institution would help. Thank you!
Amanda
Hi Amanda,
I would be happy to share - though I'm with Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA. Still interested? Let me know and I'll send it right over.
Could you share that with me too if you don't mind? I'm working on updating our FT and Group contracts as separate entities and would love to see some of the verbiage used in yours.
Megan
Yes absolutely! Sorry for the mix up. I appreciate it :)
I kind of have a mix of all the comments. Our group sales is: we require a downpayment to hold your tickets > Group contact is signed via Adobe Sign (awesome program!!!) > final headcount is due 30 days prior to the performance > reminder sent two weeks prior to due date > payment is actually charged if I don't hear from them. I feel the "threat" of automatic payments is enough fire under their butts more than releasing seats for the group to actually get their numbers in. Responsible groups like automatic payment because they don't have to remember to call in or email, the tickets are just charged and mailed out to them.
Let me know if you have any questions, and I can send you any of our verbiage or processes.
Hello,
Have any of you been able to send out reservation reminders using Wordfly or the equivalent? Someone mentioned this at the EU conf. We are struggling to make the Hold Until date a Custom data in Analytics or List manager?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Best wishes,
Sarah