Club payments

Into the club's own Stripe account, and from there into the club's own bank account, on the club's own payout schedule. Frienemi doesn't hold your members' money and doesn't sit between you and it. Payments are taken through Frienemi and Stripe passes the club's share straight to the club's Stripe account as part of the same transaction. There's no manual step for us to forget and no float sitting somewhere waiting on us. Practically, that means the club's treasurer keeps their normal relationship with their own bank, and if you ever stopped using Frienemi the account would still be yours.

One thing, once: connect payouts. It's on a laptop — go to your club, then Payments, and press Connect payouts. Either the owner or an admin can do it. You'll be handed over to Stripe, who ask for what a payment processor has to ask for: the club's bank account, some identity details for whoever's representing the club, and possibly the club's registration details. That's Stripe's form, not ours, and we don't see or store those documents. You don't have to finish it in one sitting. Come back to the Payments page and it'll tell you in plain English what Stripe is still waiting on — "add the club's bank account", "verify the representative's identity" — and give you a button back into the flow. When it's done the page says Payouts ready. Until it says that, you can't put a price on anything. The API refuses it outright, not just the button: a price nobody can pay you for is worse than no price.

Your club's own rate is printed on the Payments page, on the payouts card, before a single payment is taken. It's read from the arrangement that will actually be applied — not a brochure figure — and if your club is on a no-fee period it says so with the date that period ends. Two things are true of it whenever a share is taken, and both are enforced rather than promised. It comes out of the club's share; it is never added on top of what your member pays. And if a price were ever so small that the fees would swallow all of it, the sale is refused before your member is charged, rather than the club receiving nothing. Stripe's own processing fee is separate and is Stripe's. It varies by card, so it's disclosed as a settled fact rather than a rate: every payment on the Finance page carries the actual fee Stripe charged, alongside our share and what the club kept. If you haven't been told your rate in writing, ask before you switch paid joining on — email support@frienemi.com. Don't infer it from this page; we deliberately don't publish a number here that your club's own screen can contradict.

You create a membership plan. On a laptop: club → Payments → Create a membership plan. Both the owner and admins can do this. A plan has a name, a description, a currency, a price, and how long it lasts. Length is two separate choices, which is the bit worth reading twice: how long a term runs — a number of weeks, months or years, or a fixed end date, or never expires — and separately whether it renews itself. So "12 months, paid once" and "12 months, renewing" are both possible, and so is a life membership. You can have as many plans as you like — full, social, junior, country. You can edit any of them, and you can deactivate one to stop selling it. You can only delete a plan nobody has ever bought; once there's money against it, deactivate it instead. Members buy it themselves, on their phone or on a laptop, through Stripe's own checkout page. Neither app ever asks anyone to type a card number into Frienemi.

No — they do it themselves, from their membership screen, on either platform. Change plan, pick the new one, and they're shown exactly what they'll pay or be credited before they confirm. Both directions take effect immediately, and neither moves their end date. Moving up charges the difference for the days left in the term rather than a fresh full price. Moving down doesn't hand cash back: the unused difference becomes credit with your club, which they spend on their next purchase from you. The rounding on both goes the member's way. Their credit balance shows on their own membership screen, and to you as a column on the member roster. Nothing about this is yours to approve or arrange. The only reason it's here is that a treasurer asked to move somebody between plans usually doesn't need to.

Because there's a third step, and it's the one clubs miss. The Payments page is a ladder of three. Connect payouts. Create a membership plan. Turn on paid joining. Until that third switch is on, your plan sits there and sells nothing — which is on purpose, because it lets you get the wording and the prices right without accidentally charging the first person who wanders in while you're still deciding. The switch won't move until the two below it are done, and it tells you which one is missing: "Finish payout setup first", or "Create and activate a positive-priced membership plan first". A plan that's been deactivated, or that's priced at zero, doesn't count as something to sell. Either the owner or an admin can flip it. If your committee's understanding is that starting the club charging is the owner's decision, that's a rule you'll have to keep among yourselves — the app doesn't enforce it. The page draws all three as a progress line, so if you're not sure where you're up to, that's the thing to look at first.

You're asked to confirm first, because two of its three effects land on people who aren't in the room with you. New members join without buying anything. That's the one you meant. Everyone already on a paid membership keeps being charged. Flipping this switch cancels no subscription and refunds nobody. If you're winding your paid membership up rather than pausing it, those have to be cancelled or refunded one at a time. And approving a join request stops handing over a membership. On a club that charges, Approve is a comp — it gives someone a full membership for nothing. With paid joining off there's no membership to give, so the person you approve is in the club but holds nothing, and will still be stopped by anything the club charges for. That's the one that surprises committees a season later. It's reversible in a tap, so it's a safe thing to switch off while you rethink your prices. Just don't read it as "stop the club charging" — it only closes the front door.

Because that's where committees do money, and because two half-finished admin screens that disagreed with each other would be worse than one that works. The split lines up with how a club actually runs. Session stuff on your phone, at the court. Creating a session, RSVPs, adding walk-ins, taking a door payment, shuffling rounds, entering scores, setting tonight's fee. Pricing tonight is a decision a host makes standing on the court, so that one stayed on the phone. Money administration on a laptop, at home. Connecting payouts, membership plans and prices, refunds, payouts, the finance page, who's about to lapse. Members are not affected by any of this. A member can buy a membership, pay for a session, change plan, verify a student email, cancel, resume, retry a failed payment, change their card and read their own receipts — all on their phone. If you open the club on your phone as an owner or admin you'll see one row, "Payments — manage on the web", which opens the right page in your browser.

No. Nobody already subscribed is ever repriced. If a member is on an auto-renewing plan at last year's price, they keep last year's price for as long as they keep renewing. The plan editor tells you this while you're typing the new figure, with the actual numbers for your club: how many members keep the old price forever, how many will meet the new price the next time they buy, and how many are mid-way into the plan already. There is no "migrate everyone to the new price" button, because there's no honest version of one. If you need existing members on the new rate, the way to do it is to create a new plan and deactivate the old one. Deactivating a plan doesn't cut anyone off. Everyone on it keeps what they've already paid for until it runs out, it just doesn't renew — and each of them is told exactly that.

Two levels. A club-wide default, set on the Payments page — the price a newly created session starts at. Changing it later doesn't reprice sessions that already exist, and the screen says so. And a price on the session itself, which you can set on your phone. Open the session, tap the session fee row, and pick Club default, Free, or a custom amount. You get a preview of exactly what a member will see. Making one week free doesn't wipe the price you'd stored — next week goes back to normal. The figure you set is the visitor's price. You can charge your own members less than that, or nothing — see the next question. Someone with an account who isn't in your club pays the visitor's price and buys their own pass online. A walk-in with no account settles at the door, by QR or in cash. Session fees are set on social sessions. Memberships, coaching and anything else the club sells are priced in their own places, not from here.

Yes, and there are two ways, depending on how fine-grained you need to be. The simple one: on a priced session, alongside the price a visitor pays, there's a Members setting. It's a straight choice of Free or Pays. Free is the default and has been how the product worked for its whole life — belonging to the club gets you in. Choose Pays and you type the member's amount, which has to be at least 1.00. The form shows you the saving as a percentage while you type. The fine-grained one: on the same screen you can give individual membership plans their own price for that night — free, or an amount. Add only the plans you want to say something about, through the picker; every plan you don't add falls through to the member rate. So a club selling a hundred plans still gets a two-row form. Whatever you set, the rule at checkout is that a person pays the lowest price they qualify for. That has one consequence to know about: you can type a member price higher than the visitor price, and the form will let you with a warning, but it will never be collected. Those members pay the visitor price. Belonging can't cost more than walking in, by design, so a member rate above the visitor rate is a stored number that does nothing. Two people are never charged whatever you set: the owner and the admins. You don't charge the people running the night to attend it. One thing to get right in your own wording to members. Where you leave Members on Free, belonging is the door — anyone on the roster in good standing walks in, whether they bought a membership from you, joined by invite link, or came across in the spreadsheet import. Where you set a member rate, belonging becomes a discount instead: a membership no longer opens the door on its own, and every member pays the member price for that night. You can set these when you create the session, or change them later from the session's fee screen.

Yes, and like the student price on a membership, the member proves it themselves so nobody on the committee is checking cards at the gate. On the session's price, alongside the standard fee, you set a lower price and give it a name — Student, Junior, Concession, whatever your club calls it. The lower price has to be at least 1.00 and has to be under the standard fee. And it has to be attached to something the person can prove: an email domain your members verify against, the same mechanism the student membership price uses. There's one requirement worth knowing before you set it up. The proof has to record a number — a student number, a membership number — because without one a single mailbox would unlock the concession on account after account. If your club has no verification method yet, or has one that records no number, the price screen offers you the shortest way to fix it right there rather than sending you off to another screen with a half-typed price. At checkout, whoever holds a current, verified credential is charged the lower price. Everyone else pays the standard one. It's worked out on our side, not asked as a question, so nobody can tick a box they aren't entitled to. A member who also holds the concession gets whichever of the two prices is lower. If the lower price is small enough that the platform's share would swallow it, the sale is refused before your member is charged rather than the club receiving nothing.

On a session with a fee, they can't join. It's a hard block, not a nudge, and it's checked whether they tap Join, ask to join, or you approve them — they're told the session needs paying for and shown how. The one exception is a walk-in guest with no account. They're seated free and never blocked, because they're standing in front of you; the money is settled separately, at the door. One thing to be careful about in your own wording to members. Both apps say active club members join free, and whether that's true depends on one setting on the night itself. If you left Members on Free, it is true, and it's true of everyone on the roster — whether they bought a membership, joined by invite link or arrived in a spreadsheet import. If you set a member rate on that session, it isn't: members pay the member price, and a membership is a discount rather than a door. Before you put a price on a Thursday night, decide which of the two you meant, and say so in the group chat. Someone whose renewal has failed keeps their access while Stripe retries the card, which takes a few weeks. The At risk page shows how long each of them has left. They can retry the payment themselves, or change their card, from their own membership screen.

Yes, and they prove it themselves so nobody on the committee has to check a student card. You set it up on a laptop, on the plan: turn on "Offer a student price". Three things to fill in. The student price, which has to be lower than the standard one. The email domain that counts as proof — you type it in, so whichever university, TAFE or school your members come from is fine; there's no restriction to particular kinds of address. And how often they have to prove it again: never, every six months, every twelve, or a number of months you choose. From the member's side: the plan shows them the student price with the domain that unlocks it, they enter an email address at that domain, and we email a six-digit code to it. Typing it back confirms them. The code lasts an hour, and five wrong tries kills it and starts again. Only the address the code actually arrived at counts — receiving the email is the proof, not typing the address. When their verification goes stale they quietly go back to the standard price rather than being cut off. If they've asked to renew, they're warned a month and then a week before. Students can verify on their phone; it's only the setting up that's on the web.

It depends what the cash is for, and the two answers are different. Cash at the door, for a walk-in guest on a priced night, you can record. Take the money, tap to mark that guest paid, and the club books a payment for it — same figure, same ledger, same reports as a card payment, with no card involved. It's the owner, an admin, or that night's host who can do it. Cash for a membership, you can't. There's currently no way to record "Mary paid me $120 in the clubhouse" against your plan price, so a cash-paying member won't show as paid up and won't get past a paywalled session. What you can do instead is comp them. On a club that charges to join, pressing Approve on their join request gives them a full membership with nothing recorded against it. They're in, they can play, and the club's takings and your member export both show zero for them and label it as a comp, so nobody later mistakes it for a payment. Worth knowing before you do it: a comp can't be undone from the app, and the zero is the figure your reports will carry. If cash memberships are a big part of how your club works, tell us — support@frienemi.com. It's a known gap rather than a decision.

On a laptop: club → Payments → Finance, find the payment in the list, press Refund. On the web that page is the owner's, so today that's the owner. You can refund the whole thing or part of it, and you get told what the refund will do before you commit — including, in as many words, whether it ends that member's membership immediately. A full refund does end it, and cancels the renewal. A partial refund never ends anyone's access, however large. You can't refund a comp or a payment recorded outside Stripe — cash at the door included — because no money came through us to send back. Settle those the way you took them. We don't impose a deadline of our own. Stripe has its own limits on how long after a payment it will refund, and if Stripe refuses you'll see Stripe's own reason. Two things happen automatically, without anyone pressing anything. Cancelling a session refunds every session fee and guest pass on it. So does skipping one week of a recurring session. And if a payment lands for a session that's already been cancelled, it's refunded straight back with the member told why.

On the club's own Stripe payout schedule, which the club controls, not us. The Finance page prints it in words — automatic payouts every business day, or weekly on a particular day, or monthly, or manual — along with when the next lot is expected to leave Stripe. Note the wording: money leaving Stripe and money appearing in the club's bank statement can be a couple of days apart. To change the schedule, or to see payouts older than the last hundred, use "Manage in Stripe" on the Finance page. That opens the club's own Stripe dashboard. That button is owner-only and deliberately isn't given to admins. An admin who can issue a refund has no business changing which bank account the club's money lands in.

Club → Payments → Finance, on a laptop. On the web it's the owner's page. At the top, the club's cash position per currency: earned, what's still sitting in Stripe, what's on its way, what's been refunded, what's been paid out. Then every payment and refund in one searchable list, newest first, filterable by paid or refunded, searchable by member or plan. Each line shows what the member paid, Stripe's processing fee, Frienemi's share and what the club actually kept. Then your payouts, each with its amount and the date it should arrive. And revenue for a calendar month, stepped a month at a time, broken down by what sold — memberships, session fees, guest passes — and by plan, with refunds shown as their own negative lines rather than netted off. Abandoned checkouts are counted separately, because nothing was charged. Comps and cash records are labelled, so a zero-dollar line can't be mistaken for a subscription. Two things it won't do: a custom date range, or a spreadsheet of payments. For either of those, use the club's own Stripe dashboard. The member export from the Members tab gives you a spreadsheet of who's on what plan and what they're paid through, but it carries no amounts — it's a roster, not a ledger.

Club → Payments → At risk. Both the owner and admins can see it. Four groups. People whose membership runs out tonight. People whose renewal has failed and is being retried, with how long the grace runs and how long it's been failing. People with a plan change pending — including the ones where the change can never actually happen because the plan they're moving to has no price, which is the only place in Frienemi you'll see that. And people ending within the next three days. It also tells you whether there's anything they could currently buy to stay, and warns you if the people about to lapse include your own admins. It's a read-only page, and that's deliberate rather than unfinished — it doesn't offer you buttons for things the product can't yet do. Treat it as the list of people to ring, chase or comp. Members do get warned automatically as their membership nears its end, and anyone whose payment failed can fix their own card from their membership screen.

Yes to both, without emailing the treasurer. On their phone or on a laptop, they open the club and go to their membership, where they can cancel, resume a cancellation they've changed their mind about, change plan, retry a payment that failed, or update their card. Their own payment history is there too — every membership payment, session fee, guest pass and door payment they've made to your club. It's their own record and nobody else's, so every member can open it whether or not they hold a membership. Cancelling doesn't cut them off mid-term. They keep what they've paid for until it runs out, and it doesn't renew. Note that removing someone from the club doesn't cancel their membership, and it's blocked while they have a live one. If someone's leaving the club and has paid, sort the membership out first — cancel it or refund it — and then remove them.