ACA WSO Web/database Report for the November 2012 Teleconference.

The number of registered meetings on the meeting list continues to grow, 1150 registered ACA meetings as of this week, including 61 newly registered meetings.

The web site activity continues to grow at a nominal rate. In October, we averaged 1229 unique visitors per day, a 7.8% increase over last month.

I continue to build and update the layout of the “Repository”. For now, I am also continuing to post the Teleconference Agendas and Committee Reports. (Congratulations to Larry for posting the Literature Committee report himself). I am slowly moving the critical information currently on the forum to the Repository, including posting the OPPM as revised at last month’s teleconference.

The office has reported a continuing problem with the Shopping Cart where some orders are failing to show funds captured in the Merchant Account, with the result that some orders were double charged, and other cancelled orders were still charged to the customer’s account. It looks like a problem between GoDaddy’s Shopping Cart and Intuit’s Merchant Account. I continue to work with both vendors to isolate and correct the problem. In the meantime, I’ve developed methods for the staff to identify such potential problems, and I’ve returned (thru the Merchant Account) the nine orders so impacted in October. This problem has taken an inordinate amount of my time (not to mention our accountant’s time), which has put me behind schedule on other projects.

I’ve updated the web site ABC page to announce the 2013 ABC, and I’ve sent out the first bulk emails for the ABC to the meeting Private Points of Contact. I’ve also sent the list of snail-mail addresses to the office for postal mailing (for those meetings where no Point of Contact was on record with an email address). I hope to send out the InterGroup equivalent mailings within the next few weeks.

Kelso continues with the development for the “back-end” of the meeting update software. This will ultimately replace the current online meeting and Inter Group registration forms as well as the MS Access database held at the office. This will greatly simplify the meeting update process and should integrate well with the ”front-end” web meeting list once that is transferred from allone.com to adultchildren.org.

I have contacted David indicating board approval to his proposed Non-Disclosure Agreement and hope to get a signed copy to him soon. Once the agreement is approved and signed, I’d hope to work with David in moving the software to our host web site and the adultchildren.org domain, however in view of my current work schedule, that task may need to be further delayed.

Phyllis and I will be visiting the Signal Hill office later this month. We hope to review the current processes, and hopefully improve efficiencies, with an eye to reduce the ever growing labor expenses.

Items for discussion at the Teleconference (not motions):

  1. The office reports an inordinate amount of time folding and preparing the many Literature Tri-folds, probably resulting in a net loss when receiving orders for a number of Tri-folds. While some economies may be realized by using a vendor to fold the Tri-folds, I also want to explore dropping the Tri-folds from Shopping Cart and put them all on the web for free download. Having them available for free download might save us funds in the long run. Comments??
  2. Updating the paper order forms has proven near impossible to match the shipping costs of the Shopping Cart. This requires considerable extra office labor time to manually enter these orders into the system, revising the shipping costs to match that of the paper order (not to mention handling arithmetic errors by the customer in completing the order form). The Shopping Cart includes the capability (currently disabled) to allow the customer to fill out an order, indicating payment by check. The customer would then print out and mail a copy of the order form, along with a check, to the office. It would still be more work at the office than those processed by credit card, but would be less work than the current fully manual process. Once implemented, I would remove the paper order forms from the web site. Prospective customers would thus need to find a computer to place an order, but would not need a credit card (or a Pay Pal account) to place an order. Again, comments??

Scott R.

ACA WSO Webmaster