Invoicing members and collecting payments

Hello and welcome to SwimClub Manager. Today we will be going over the finance features, including setting up direct debit payments via Go Cardless and accepting payments via credit and debit cards.

Invoicing your members

Members can be invoiced for a number of things, and in a number of ways. You can invoice for gala fees, club fees, groups and sessions.

Before using the invoicing features, you need to setup a few things.

Go to setup, finances, invoice types. Invoice types allow you to separate different invoices, for example gala fees, swimming fees and club kit.

You need to create at least one invoice type, but you can create as many as you like.

Once created, it’s now time to decide how you will be invoicing your members.

In this example, we will be invoicing our members every month for their swim fees. So, now we need to create some fees.

On the finances menu, under setup, click on club fees.

We will now create a fee by clicking on the “Add Fee” button, and entering the details.

Once created, click on it, then click the “Add members to fee” button. You can filter the member list by age and club group. Leave blank to get all members by clicking the “List members” button.

Go through the list and select any member you would like to assign this fee to. Then, click the “Add members to fee” button at the bottom.

Do that process for all the fees you created in the steps above.

Because we will be invoicing our members each month, we can setup a recurring invoice. Go to finances, invoices, recurring invoices. Click the “Add recurring invoice” button.

This form has the following options.

Day of month. Select the day of the month you would like your monthly invoices to be created on.

Set end date to end of month. Leave this checked and the system will set the end of the invoice period to the last day of the month.

Due date. Set how many days after the invoice is created you want the invoice due date to be. Invoice die dates are what drives the direct debit payment collection. More on that later.

Invoice period title. Enter the title for the invoice period, which is displayed on the related invoices. You can use special tags that will enter the current month and year for this.

Select the invoice type.

Account code. Account codes are for when you are using the accounting features of the system. For example when reconciling your invoices to a bank statement. More on this later.

Collect payment via Go Cardless. This is so that you can tell the system that you want these invoices to be collected via direct debit. More on this later.

Ignore member discounts. You can give members discounts on their invoices. If you would not like the system to assign those discounts for these invoices, check this option.

Because we are invoicing based on club fees, select the relevant fees in this section, and ignore the club groups.

Automatically email invoices. Check this option if you want the system to automatically email out the invoices each month once they are created.

Either select an email template, or type in what you want the email to say. You can insert tags for first and last name so the system will replace those with the recipient’s actual name.

Click the “Add recurring invoice” button, and the system will automatically create invoices for all members with the assigned fees you selected, on the day of the month you selected.

Manually creating invoices

If you can’t or don’t want to use recurring invoices, you can create them manually.

Go to finances, invoices, add invoice period. Enter the relevant details into the form.

Again, we will invoice based on club fees, so leave the “which fees to use” option as it is and scroll down to the fees section. Select the relevant fees you want to invoice, then click the “Add invoice period” button.

To view all of the invoices related to an invoice period, click on the invoice period and they will be listed below. If you make a mistake, or need to delete them, deleting the invoice period will also delete all the associated invoices.

To view all unpaid invoices, go to finances, invoices, view invoices. The system automatically lists the unpaid ones, but you can use the filter options at the top to view paid ones, as well as filter by invoice type and group.

Click on an invoice number to view it. You will see all the relevant invoice details, as well as any payments made to the invoice at the bottom.

If you need to manually receive payment for an invoice, there are a couple of ways to do it. Go back to the view invoices page. Look for the invoice in question and tick the “update” check box. In the paid date field, it automatically displays todays date. If the payment date was not today, click it to edit it.

If the invoice is being paid in full, leave the value in the total field. If it is an under payment or over payment, adjust the total accordingly. If a member has paid too much, the system will automatically create a credit note for the difference.

Click the update button at the bottom and the invoice will be marked as paid, and the payment added to it.

The other way of adding a payment to an invoice manually is via the invoice details page. Click on an invoice to view it. Scroll to the bottom and click on the “Add payment” button.

Enter the relevant details and if you want the invoice to be marked as paid, check that option, then click the “Add payment” button.

Accepting credit and debit card payments. If you would like your members to be able to pay their invoices via card, go to “Setup, finances, online invoice payments”. We use Stripe for credit and debit card payments. Click on the “Connect with Stripe” button.

If you have a Stripe account already, click the “sign in” option. If not, fill in the form on this page.

You will then be sent back to SwimClub Manager and your Stripe account will be connected.

That’s it. From now on, when a member views an invoice or you email an invoice to someone, there will be a link in it that says “pay this invoice online”.

View an invoice and downlod the PDF version, then open it. Click on the link and you will be taken to a page with a “Pay now” button on it.

To take payments from your member via direct debit, go to setup, finances, direct debit payments. We use Go Cardless for direct debit payments. Click on the “Connect with Go Cardless” button and follow the instructions.

You will be redirected back to SwimClub Manager and your Go Cardless account will be linked.

If you use Go Cardless already, you can click on the “List mandates” button and link your mandates to the members in the system.

If you do not use it already, you now need to get your members to login and create their mandates. All they need to do is login, click on the “Your finances” tile and then click the link at the top and follow the instructions. Go Cardless we create a direct debit mandate and link it to their SwimClub Manager account.

Once a member creates a mandate in this way, any invoices created for them from that point on will be able to be paid for automatically via their direct debit mandate.

If a parent is creating the direct debit mandate, and they have assigned swimmers in their account, they will be asked if they would like to link this new mandate to all of their assigned swimmers.

Click “Yes” to do this.

If for any reason a member wants to cancel their direct debit, all they need to do is click on the finances tile on their dashboard, then click the “Cancel direct debit” button. From that point on, no more invoices will be able to be paid via direct debit.

Ok, now that you have setup direct debit payments, there are some useful features to be aware of.

Each invoice can be set to be collected via direct debit or not. When you are creating invoice periods, or recurring invoices, you will remember the “Use Go Cardless” option.

If for some reason you want to have a certain invoice not be collected via direct debit, find the invoice by going to the all invoices page under finances, invoices, view invoices. Then click on it.

Click the word “Yes” next to where it says “Collect via go cardless”, then select no and click the tick button.

Be aware though that you can only do this if the invoice due date is in the future.

If you want to update every invoice associated to an invoice period to not collect via direct debit, go to finances, invoices, view invoice periods.

Click on the invoice period in question. Set the “update collect via go cardless” to “No” then click update. Every invoice in this period will be updated to not collect via direct debit.

To email invoices to your members, go to finances, invoices, email invoices. Select who you want to email invoices to, enter the email details and then click the “Email invoices” button.

Please be aware, there is an option at the bottom titled “Remove duplicates”. If a parent has more than one child assigned to their account and they have the parent’s email in all of them, you must uncheck this option. If you do not, the parent will only receive one email as the duplicates on the other children will be ignored.

To send an account statement to your members, go to finances, invoices, email statements. On the form, select who you want to send the statements to, enter the email, then click the “Email statements” button.

Every member you selected will receive an email with a PDF attachment of their account statement.