Small yacht clubs and electronic payments - advice

wizard

wizard

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We are a small club as stated and getting more and more requests for paying subscription and mooring fees etc by direct bank transfers and some for allowing card payments in the bar.

If anybody has any helpful advice / experience / costs involved to give I would be grateful to receive it.

All the club officials are volunteers but not experts in this field.
 
This is timely in that we are having the same problem in my yacht club. The old treasurer has explained to me why it is not a good idea.

The limited information with the payment makes it very difficult to tie up with the person paying. So, say twenty members named Smithsonion try to pay you will find duplicates and not be able to identify them. Even worse if they are service or police personnel who use their ranks; all would start with Constable Smith John and the 18 digit limit causes hell.

The work load double or trebles for the treasurer. Better the old method of sending cheques, the treasurer ticks off what they are for, subs, slops, events and pays them in as groups.

Bank transfer easier for the payee but not for the recipient. Now ditch the Hon. Treasurer title and the argument may change slightly.
 
Mariner69 said:
This is timely in that we are having the same problem in my yacht club. The old treasurer has explained to me why it is not a good idea.

The limited information with the payment makes it very difficult to tie up with the person paying. So, say twenty members named Smithsonion try to pay you will find duplicates and not be able to identify them. Even worse if they are service or police personnel who use their ranks; all would start with Constable Smith John and the 18 digit limit causes hell.



The work load double or trebles for the treasurer. Better the old method of sending cheques, the treasurer ticks off what they are for, subs, slops, events and pays them in as groups.

Bank transfer easier for the payee but not for the recipient. Now ditch the Hon. Treasurer title and the argument may change slightly.
Click to expand...

Each member has a unique reference or account number that is added in the "reference" field of the electronic payment?:rolleyes: Sounds easy to me. You could also have twenty members called Smithsonion writing cheques too. Not to mention electronic payment is instant and no popping to the bank for the treasurer and the bank charges associated with cashing the cheques.
 
MrB said:
Each member has a unique reference or account number that is added in the "reference" field of the electronic payment?:rolleyes: Sounds easy to me. You could also have twenty members called Smithsonion writing cheques too. Not to mention electronic payment is instant and no popping to the bank for the treasurer and the bank charges associated with cashing the cheques.
Click to expand...

Food for thought indeed. Many thanks.
 
For our class association, and my local club, we use standing orders which are easy to set up, but the problems are:
1. Knowing who it's from: we ask for the reference to be surname & boat name
2. When the subs change, it's a nightmare as most standing orders aren't updated.

But direct debits require a helpful bank to set up.

On the website, for regalia etc, we use PayPal - but have had to increase the prices to allow for the 3.6% commission.

For card payments in the bar, you could consider Payleven (Payleven) (we use them for our B&B our B&B) which is cheap to set up, no monthly fees, reasonable commission (2.75%), and easy to use as long as you have a smartphone/tablet with internet.

There are similar products from Intuit, Paypal, Sumup, WorldPay, Izettle and probably others.
Intuit
Paypal
Sumup
WorldPay
iZettle
 
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wizard said:
We are a small club as stated and getting more and more requests for paying subscription and mooring fees etc by direct bank transfers and some for allowing card payments in the bar.

If anybody has any helpful advice / experience / costs involved to give I would be grateful to receive it.

All the club officials are volunteers but not experts in this field.
Click to expand...

Set up a paypal account so people can pay you by credit card or get a personal card reader, include or add the 2-3% transaction cost to to the bill, cheap and easy enough. Depends on what type of account you have i doubt you will get charged for people transferring cash into the account. Look at the banking terms of the account and associated cost, call them up?

*Lakesailored* lol :eek::encouragement:
 
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No experience from the receiving end, but surely to pay by direct bank transfer all that's needed is for you to give your bank details (ie accnt and sort code) out along with the request for payment. It must help if each invoice also has a unique ID code that the payer can quote in the transfer so you can identify who its from. Paying online via credit card - quite a few small organisations I've used recently seem to use paypal - reminding customers that even though there's a prominent prompt on the payment page to log in to your paypal account, you can also pay directly by credit card without an account.

Payments in person by credit card I'm afraid I don't have any thoughts on.
 
Mariner69 said:
This is timely in that we are having the same problem in my yacht club. The old treasurer has explained to me why it is not a good idea.

The limited information with the payment makes it very difficult to tie up with the person paying. So, say twenty members named Smithsonion try to pay you will find duplicates and not be able to identify them. Even worse if they are service or police personnel who use their ranks; all would start with Constable Smith John and the 18 digit limit causes hell.

The work load double or trebles for the treasurer. Better the old method of sending cheques, the treasurer ticks off what they are for, subs, slops, events and pays them in as groups.

Bank transfer easier for the payee but not for the recipient. Now ditch the Hon. Treasurer title and the argument may change slightly.
Click to expand...


You have nailed it in one. We are getting the odd direct bank transfer which is a problem for the treasurer to identify.

It's trying to find the solution that is simple and does not add too much to the workload.
 
I belong to a skiing club - we got into direct debits for subs quite early on.

On the whole it works well. Biggest problem (believe it or not) is members who we 'lose' - because they move house for instance, but who keep paying anyway. We end up with no way of contacting these members. Our current membership form requests members' email addresses, but even these can change.

We only accept cash for clubhouse stuff.
 
Surely it can't be that much of a problem? Lots of large companies manage with far greater numbers than a yacht club is likely to have. I wonder if it more to do with resistance to change?
 
Lakesailor said:
You've answered your own question.
Does he still have a wooden drawer under a counter that he keeps the cash in?
Click to expand...

Beautifully selective in the editing. When I said ditch the Hon. Treasurer I was referring to the Hon part not the whole thing. There again he can be a pitta! :-)
 
MrB said:
Each member has a unique reference or account number that is added in the "reference" field of the electronic payment?:rolleyes: Sounds easy to me.
Click to expand...

Exactly. How does Mariner's quill-pen-merchant imagine British Gas cope?

Whether or not you arrange to accept cards at the bar, standing orders for subs should be a no-brainer.

MrB said:
Set up a paypal account so people can pay you by credit card
Click to expand...

I would be very wary of PayPal. They're great from the payer's point of view, I use them all the time, but they can be arbitrary and capricious in dealing with merchants. If they suddenly decide to freeze your account or start reversing payments, there is very little you can do about it.

Pete
 
It really is a doddle. I run a skydiving club and we haven't taken cheques for years, far too expensive to process and I very rarely write a check and usually to small suppliers who haven't updated to the current millennium. As previously mentioned, all it takes is for the payer to apply a unique reference to the payment and it's instant. Card payments are a bit more expensive, about £25 per month for the terminal and some 2.5% fees. Depending on turnover, you could let regulars have a monthly account to be settled by bank transfer and let others still pay cash in the bar etc.
 
Have to say the treasurers argument did strike me as one of those "we've always down it this way" type arguments. Lots of good links/ suggestions on here.

Agree with Lakey though. HT seems to be the problem. Time for an upgrade of HT!!
 
Providing account details to pay into, and requiring that members use a suitable reference (name and or membership number) seems like a simple and zero cost approach.
Doesn't need standing orders, direct debits, card commissions or anything - just requires members to set up a direct payment, typically done using their online banking service.
Allowing the option of cheques for Luddites is also a good idea.

Can't see why this should be a big issue. Can't remember when I last wrote a cheque personally.
 
My small (350 approx membership) club started using Webcollect about a year ago. Certainly works OK for the members and I have yet to hear any major complaints from the Hon Treas. Webcollect gives you a unique reference to use when you pay by your usual online banking process which remains completely isolated from the club accounts other than exchanging transaction references.
 
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