Contributions and dues
Before you start, open these pages: Members / Member Contributions, Members / Memberships and Cash / Transactions.
Can’t find one? It may be turned off for your business, or your account may not be allowed to open it. Ask the person who set up your FeePrime. They can fix both.
Most member groups collect money from their members regularly. Member contributions are how you write down what each member is expected to pay.
What a contribution holds
- A name, which says what the money is for.
- An expected amount per member.
- A frequency. One time, monthly, or yearly.
- A deadline, which says when it is due.
- Mandatory for membership types, which says which kinds of member have to pay it.
That last one is what makes this useful. You can have a building fund every member owes. A regional levy only members in one area owe. A joining fee only new members pay.
What you expect, and what you actually get
The contribution record says what should come in.
The money that does come in is a transaction, the same as any other payment.
Keeping those two apart is the whole trick. Because you wrote down what you expected, you can answer the question every committee asks: who has paid, and who has not.
If you only wrote down the money that arrived, you would know your total. You would not know who is missing.
Pick a deadline you will actually use
A deadline nobody acts on teaches your members that deadlines do not matter. Then they ignore the next one too.
So pick a date you will really do something about. Send a reminder. Read the list out at a meeting. Mark someone as no longer in good standing. Then actually do it.
One deadline you enforce is worth five you do not.
Keep contributions separate from membership fees
A membership fee pays for being a member. You are a member of this type until this date.
A contribution is money members owe because they are members. A levy. A building fund. A share of something the group is paying for together.
They work differently, and you report on them differently. Mix them together and you can never say how much of what someone paid was their membership, and how much was the building fund.
Chasing members is not debt collection
The contributions summary shows you who has not paid.
In a member group, that list is mostly people who forgot, people who moved, or people having a hard year. It is rarely people avoiding you.
So use it early, and go gently. A reminder in week two is a kindness. A demand in month six is a fight, and it usually costs you the member as well as the money.
Try it
On staging.feeprime.com, create a monthly contribution that only one membership type has to pay. Record payment from some members and not others. Then run the contributions summary and look at who is missing.