Membership Payments

How membership payments are collected, and what happens when a payment fails

Members pay for their memberships online through a payment method your club has activated, or by manual methods like bank transfer, cash or cheque if the membership price allows them. This page covers how the money flows, what happens without an online method, and what Range Mate does when a recurring card payment stops working.

How members pay

Each membership price you set up lists which of your active payment methods it takes:

• Online. The member pays through the provider's secure page (card, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Direct Debit, depending on the provider). Upfront prices are one-off payments. Monthly and quarterly prices set up a payment plan: the member saves a card or Direct Debit mandate once, and Range Mate collects each instalment automatically (see below).

• Manual. The member tells you they'll pay by bank transfer, cash, cheque or your card machine, using the details from Club Settings → Payments. The payment waits under Club Admin → Payments → To confirm until you record it.

Online payment needs a method that is active for membership payments under Club Settings → Payments.

Monthly and quarterly plans

A monthly or quarterly price is the membership fee paid in instalments, not an open-ended subscription. The price is the amount per instalment; a member joining part way through the year pays one instalment per month (or quarter) left in the term, so nobody pays for months they weren't a member. The plan ends with the membership, and renewing starts a new one.

Range Mate runs the plan itself. The provider is only used to save a way to pay and to charge it when an instalment is due, so plans work the same way whichever provider you use:

Provider	Members pay with	Notes
Stripe	Card, or Bacs Direct Debit if you turn it on for the method	Direct Debit needs Bacs enabled in your Stripe dashboard. It settles in a few days and never asks the member to re-authenticate.
GoCardless	Bacs Direct Debit	The most robust option for a UK club. Instalments settle in three to five working days.
Mollie	Card or bank account	Whatever recurring-capable methods you have on in Mollie.
SumUp	Not available	SumUp can't save a way to pay, so it can't collect a plan. Use upfront prices with SumUp.

A monthly or quarterly price can only list methods that can save a way to pay; the price form says which of yours can. Clubs with only SumUp or manual methods use upfront prices.

What happens

1. The member chooses the price and a method and is sent to the provider's page, where the first instalment is taken and their card or mandate is saved. Their membership is live once that first instalment settles.

2. Each following instalment is collected on the same day of the month (or every third month), clamped to the end of shorter months. Every instalment is an ordinary row on Club Admin → Payments, with the plan it belongs to.

3. Club Admin → Payments → Plans lists every plan with what's been paid, what's next, and what it's paid with. Open a plan to Charge now, or use Actions to Pause or Resume collection, Move to a new payment, or Cancel the plan. Cancelling is for a member who is stopping: nothing more is collected and the membership ends where the paid instalments run out (three monthly instalments on a term from 1 April end it on 30 June). If nothing has been paid yet the membership simply stays unpaid. Deleting the subscription itself also cancels the plan; the instalments already taken stay on the Payments list.

4. Members see their plan on My Memberships: instalments paid, the next date and amount, and Update payment details, which saves a new card or mandate on the provider's page without taking anything. Instalments carry on at the usual dates; if one was overdue it goes out on the next hourly run.

A member renewing onto a plan with the same method doesn't have to save their card again: the first instalment of the new plan is taken from the details already saved.

Without an online method

If no online payment method is active for memberships, memberships carry on without cards:

• A price lists which of your active methods members can pay it by (the club's own bank details and notes come from each method). With no online method active, only the manual ones are offered.

• Members choosing a price see only its manual payment methods, with your payment instructions from Club Settings → Payments. A price that only allows card payment tells the member to contact the club.

• Monthly and quarterly prices need a method that can save a way to pay (Stripe, GoCardless or Mollie), so they can't be created until one is set up. Existing ones can still be archived.

• Creating and editing memberships and prices works as normal.

Event bookings fall back to bank transfer in the same situation. See Booking Payments & Bank Transfers.

Members still on plans from your old Stripe account

Plans set up before this release ran through the Stripe account linked to Range Mate, and their saved cards can't be moved to a provider account your club owns. When card payments on that account stop, such a plan stops collecting part way through the member's term, and those members need another way to pay for the rest of it: an upfront price, or a new plan through your own provider (which means saving their card again). Range Mate lists them for you and does the bookkeeping; how they pay is between you and the member.

1. Open step 4 of the migration checklist, Members on card payment plans (the checklist is linked from the foot of Club Settings → Payments while your club still has its old Stripe account). Every member on a live monthly or quarterly plan is listed with their membership, plan and how many months are left.

2. Agree with the member how they'll pay. Two common approaches: one payment for the remaining months, or a standing order for the same monthly amount that you check by hand.

3. Choose an upfront price for them and click Move to upfront payment. Their plan ends today, and a new one-off subscription covers the rest of their term. They're emailed the usual payment request. If the membership type is pro-rated, the amount shown to them covers the remaining months only; the picker shows you what they'll be asked for.

4. When the money arrives, or once their standing order is set up and you're happy to trust it, use Mark As Paid on their profile, or record it from Club Admin → Payments → To confirm, where every payment promised by hand waits. Range Mate doesn't track individual standing order instalments.

Range Mate can't cancel the plan in Stripe for you while card payments are unavailable. If you can still sign in to your club's Stripe account, cancel the plans there so nothing is collected if Stripe later resumes.

Archive your monthly and quarterly prices too, so nobody can start a new plan. Archive all monthly and quarterly prices on the same page does this in one go, skipping any membership type that has no upfront price yet.

When an instalment fails

If an instalment can't be taken (an expired card, changed details, insufficient funds), Range Mate retries it on a fixed schedule: 3 days after the first failure, then 5 days after that, then 7 days after that. If the fourth attempt also fails the plan stops. Depending on your settings under Club Settings → Payments:

• Emails the member. They're told when the next attempt will be and asked to update their payment details if the card has expired or been replaced. The email links them to their memberships page.

• Emails your admins. Everyone with an admin role gets a short alert naming the member, the membership and the failed amount, and what Range Mate does next.

• Lists the member in your action items. Members with a plan in trouble appear under Membership payment problems in your admin action items (and in the Monday digest email) until an instalment goes through.

Both emails can be switched on or off in Club Settings → Payments, and reworded from Club Settings → Emails. The action items entry always appears, whatever your email settings.

Alerts are sent on the first failure and again if the plan stops, not on every retry, so members aren't nagged while the same payment is retried.

Two situations are handled differently:

• The member's bank asks them to approve the payment (card authentication). The member is emailed a link to approve it on the provider's page. If they don't, the schedule above applies.

• The saved card or mandate can no longer be charged (expired, cancelled at the bank). No retries would help, so the plan is paused and the member is asked to save new details. Update payment details on their memberships page does that; the overdue instalment then goes out on the next hourly run and the plan carries on.

A plan can also be paused without anything going wrong: Actions → Pause collection on the plan page stops it on purpose, and deactivating a payment method pauses every plan through it. Those show as Paused rather than a payment problem, the member is told nothing is being taken, and new details from the member don't restart them. Resume collection (or reactivating the method) puts them back on schedule, with the instalment that's due taken on the next hourly run.

If the provider doesn't answer

Occasionally a provider times out or errors while an instalment is being taken, so Range Mate doesn't know whether the money moved. That attempt is kept and, for the next day, re-issued each hour with the same reference, which makes the provider return what happened the first time rather than charging again. If it still has no answer after a day, nothing more is tried automatically: the plan shows under Needs attention, and the plan page asks you to look for the reference in the provider's dashboard. Mark as not charged if there's nothing there, and the instalment is issued again.

A payment method that members pay plans through can't be removed until those plans are cancelled; deactivate it instead if you need to stop new use.

Changing provider, or switching a method off

Deactivating a method that members pay plans through pauses those plans: nothing is collected until you reactivate it (the plans resume by themselves) or move the members. A method with live plans can't be removed.

If a provider is gone for good (it closed your account, say), set up the new provider, then open Club Admin → Payments → Plans. A notice names the method that can't collect and offers Move to a new payment for everyone on it, or you can do one member at a time from their plan page. Each plan ends where its money ran out, the member keeps what they've paid, and they're emailed the usual new-payment request for the rest of their term. From their memberships page they choose a monthly or quarterly price with the new provider (the instalments follow the months left, so it pro-rates itself) or an upfront price. Nothing is charged until they do.

If the plan stops

After the last retry fails the plan is marked unpaid and nothing more is collected. The member's subscription keeps what has been paid; the club decides what happens next:

• The member can save new payment details from My Memberships, which restarts the plan; the overdue instalment goes out on the next hourly run.

• You can Resume the plan from Club Admin → Payments → Plans once they've sorted out their card or account, then Charge now to try straight away.

• Or take the rest by hand: cancel the plan and record instalments from the Payments list as they arrive.

A stopped plan doesn't remove the membership by itself. The member keeps their membership until its end date, so it's up to you to chase the payment or take action on the membership if it stays unpaid.

Related pages

• The Membership Lifecycle for how memberships start, renew and end.

• Email Templates for customising the payment emails.