What is the easiest way for groups to collect payments online?

My sister is the treasurer of a school in DC and I have tons of respect for her. She keeps track of field trip fees (which can add up fast), club dues, and the occasional PTA raffle. It is basically herding cats who owe you money. Most of the payments are via Venmo requests (some in person w/ cash and a return envelope), and she follows up via emails that are usually very passive-aggressive about reminding people to pay on time. She has to have a system for tracking all of this, and setting up online payment options apparently requires a level of technical expertise that nobody in her volunteer group wants to put in.

It doesn’t have to be this complicated for groups. But first, we have to redefine what we mean by “easy”.

Easy for whom, exactly?

The ‘easy’ option for the Treasurer would be to allow the Group Leader to log in to an online platform and view a full list of payments made to the group. The Group Leader could then export this list to a spreadsheet or send it to members via email to confirm that they are up to date with their dues. The Group Leader would no longer have to manually reconcile payments made by members and would not have to trawl through their own online transactions to check who had paid what. The Treasurer would be able to manage the payment history and view it as and when required.

This easy to use for the financial secretary and the treasurer of the group or organization. There is no manual work at night to collect or reconcile the payments that have been made by the members of the group. All payments are recorded and reported accurately. Members or families can see at any time whether they have paid or not.

This doesn’t have to be the case, but for the most part, payment tracking programs are set up with the person receiving the money in mind. That is to say, the money tracker for a club or organization is typically set up by the treasurer of that group, and therefore designed with the treasurer in mind. But for payment tracking to be ‘easy’ it must also be ‘easy’ for the people paying the money. So

Step 5: Reach for whatever’s already on everyone’s phone. That’s the instinct.

Try to collect payment with the same tools that you use for splitting dinner bill after party. Such as: (i) sending payment request via Venmo; (ii) asking to pay via PayPal; (iii) even sending payment request via Cash App. (Yes, it’s great for small group of people (i.e. 5) for one-time payment for dinner for example. However, as the group size grows (i.e. 80 club members), or even worse – as the payment frequency is spread over long time period (i.e. until end of the school year for example), – as time passes, things will start falling apart rather quickly.

The problems have a way of compounding:

• No way to track who has paid without manually cross-referencing names
• Personal accounts tangled up with group funds — a bookkeeping nightmare, and sometimes a compliance issue depending on your organization's structure
• No record of what someone paid for, only that they sent money
• Payers sometimes mark transactions as "goods and services" versus "friends and family" inconsistently, which creates fee confusion nobody anticipated

Things can descend into chaos very quickly. In my previous PTA, the PTA president and treasurer would go to great lengths to collect club dues. I even recall one October errant payment that would haunt us for the next 3 months and become the main topic of PTA meetings in February and March. That was due to a simple payment that a president or treasurer would have easily collected in a matter of minutes, had it been added to an online collection system. However, the payment was misattributed and lost in the treasurer’s cluttered life as a busy volunteer. It’s sad to watch people, who are doing their best as volunteers for the PTA, get stumped by simple things.

(Then there is the metaphysical problem of a PTA holding its finances on an individual’s phone. That may be a whole different post, though.)

Online Group Payment Collection Made Easy for All

The best payment management tools are those which have a administrative layer on top of the payment tools that general payment apps have. Online payment collection tools for groups can have their payments itemized, automatic confirmation emails sent to the payers and a very up to date and organized dashboard for the group where they can see who has paid, what they paid for, and how much more they need to pay. The group does not have to deal with all of the pain of payment management and the information is all in one place and up to date instead of a spread sheet full of messy information or a flood of emails in a person’s inbox.

Most online tools used for tracking of payment by groups, such as for schools, non-profit clubs and volunteer-based groups and organizations have common characteristics.

• Payers don't need to create an account or download anything
• The organizer can build forms that capture names, items purchased, and any relevant notes
• Funds flow to the group rather than someone's personal account
• There's a clean, exportable record available for end-of-year reporting or audits

A quick comparison of common approaches

Each group is unique and therefore requires a different tool for the payment collection. But for groups of more than a few people the last row is where you want to be.

Transparency

Even the best intentioned volunteer has difficulty handling money of a group through their personal accounts. Money flows through a personal account have many unknowns, create uncertainty, cause distrust, give rise to incorrect assumptions and bring about feelings of guilt. For this reason, using a personal account for the money of a group does not show respect for volunteers and for the work they do. It does not show that the group management of the group’s money is taken seriously enough and that a tool is not used for processing the group’s funds that is designed for that purpose.

By enabling group payment collection of club finances, the volunteers’ time will be safeguarded. A tool for the management of the finances will allow for easy management of the funds. The club’s record of payments will be kept up-to-date and this will show that the volunteers’ time is being respected.

Transparency is crucial and protects everyone in the group from ambiguity or incorrect assumption. Just as a house’s foundation is normally not considered until it collapses (in which case the full extent of the problems are exposed), the financial transparency and accountability to be provided by a group payment tool’s records is best built into the financial infrastructure of the group from the start.

The short answer

Using a group payment tool such as Cheddar Up to collect payments online for your group or club means that you can easily keep track of all payments made by members and other people who help out. It also means that you can provide your treasurer and other club members with the most up to date and accurate financial records. This means that all payments will have a record created with a paper trail, showing where the money was paid to, and by who. For example, payments made by members of your club for events and other activities, as well as payments made by volunteers (such as a payment of $20 by Karen).