40 Internet Services

You too can offer Online Dues Payments!

In this day and age, your customers expect a certain level of convenience when doing business with you. For example, online payments. Owners like to be able to make payments from the convenience of their own home, at any time of the day or night. Unfortunately, in our industry, it can be difficult to be as accommodating as you might like. Credit Card companies have a number of rules that fit the retail industry very well, but not so much the Association Management Industry.

Fortunately for you, TOPS Software provides a service that enables you to offer homeowners the option to pay association dues from your management or community web site(s), at absolutely no cost to you. The online payment service has no set-up fees, no monthly fees and no minimum amounts that have to flow through each community's merchant account. Transaction fees are charged directly to the payer, so there is no obligation whatsoever on the part of the association or management company. A merchant account is established for each association you set up, and all monies are deposited directly into the association’s existing bank account, so there is no need to switch banks.

Owners can pay online in the form of an e-check (ACH direct debit transaction), or using their Visa, MasterCard, or Discover Card. All financial information is stored on a secured server with Secured Socket Layer (SSL) protection. Additionally, transactions are encrypted with a 128-bit level encryption. Furthermore, owner accounts are protected by a unique user name and password that each owner defines when he or she first connects to the service.

TOPS v3.2.1™ integrates with the online payment service in two ways: First, you will initiate a regularly scheduled upload of owner information, including current balances, to the payment processor's secure site. This ensures that owners pay the correct amount owed when paying their dues online. Secondly, TOPS v3.2.1™ receives transactions that have cleared the bank account in the form of a modified lockbox file. Each day when you receive notification that transactions have cleared, you can download a lockbox file, save it to a designated location, and import the data into TOPS v3.2.1™. (Requires the TOPS v3.2.1™ Global Functions Module and a TOPS Management Company Web Site.)

You may monitor payment activity in real time through the Payment Search reports from your online dues payment account. Payments may be sorted and filtered by Property, Date, Reference Number, Description, Type (ACH, eCheck, Credit Card), Unit, Status (Processing, Pending, Paid), and Amount. All payment data and resident info can be instantly exported to comma separated values format (*.csv) for customized reporting.

Setting up Online Payments is as easy as filling in a simple spreadsheet. The setup process takes approximately 7 business days, and your associations will be up and running with online payment capabilities. Please contact onlinepayments@topssoft.com for more information on this exciting free service.

Remember, if you wish to remove an association from your account, you will need to notify onlinepayments@topssoft.com so that we can remove the link from your web site and notify the payment processor that the link should be deactivated.

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