Dues collection that runs without anybody ticking names off a list

The job is bigger than it sounds

Dues collection is often described as sending a bill. In practice it is a chain of seven links: set the rate, work out who owes what, send the request, take the payment, track who has not paid, chase them, and get the amount into the accounts on the right ledger.

Break one link and the rest fall. The classic case is a payment arriving in the association's bank account without being matched to the member, so the treasurer reconciles by hand and the member gets a reminder for something they paid three weeks ago.

So collection is not the interesting question when you choose a system. Whether the seven links hang together by themselves is.

Rates are rarely one rate

Few associations have a single membership fee. There is junior and senior, passive membership, a family discount, half a year for those joining after the summer, and an exemption for volunteers or honorary members. Each is a rule, and if the system knows only one rate, the rules become manual exceptions somebody has to remember every year.

A system that handles this properly lets you define rates as rates, attach them to membership types or teams, and let the affiliation decide the amount. Then next year's collection is one action rather than a pass through 300 rows.

Arrears are a procedure, not a feeling

The uncomfortable link is the reminder. In a volunteer association the treasurer knows the people who have not paid, and chasing a neighbour is rarely pleasant. The result is that the reminder gets postponed and the arrears grow into something the board has to discuss at a meeting.

The answer is to make it a procedure that runs without anybody having to take the decision personally: a prompt on a fixed day, a reminder after a fixed number of days, and a visible list of who is in arrears right now. Then the system does the chasing, and the board only rules on the exceptions.

It also makes the report to the general assembly honest. Arrears become a figure that exists all year, not something assembled in March.

The payment has to land in the accounts, not in an overview

Many systems stop once the member has paid. The amount sits in a payment overview, and then the treasurer's real work begins: moving it into the accounts, allocating it to the right ledgers and reconciling against the bank.

With us the dues payment is an entry in double-entry accounting immediately. That means VAT where VAT applies, bank reconciliation against actual deposits, and an export the auditor can use directly. It is deliberate, because otherwise this is exactly where associations end up with two systems, one for collection and one for accounting, and a manual bridge between them.

What collecting actually costs

Collection itself is rarely free, whatever the system costs. There is a transaction fee on every payment, and in an association with many small dues it can be the largest single line. It is worth working through with your own membership count and your own rate before comparing subscription prices.

We charge no setup fee, the subscription follows the number of users, and the transaction fee is stated openly rather than hidden inside a bundled price.