"Who's paid?" The Sunday-night spreadsheet

In short: Collecting $40 a family for a tournament shouldn’t take longer than planning the tournament. It does because the money arrives in four different ways, and none of them knows who it’s for or what it’s for. Collect the money with the RSVP, record every payment in one place however it came, and the Sunday-night spreadsheet gets much shorter.

It’s Sunday night, and the laptop is open to a spreadsheet with 24 names for the spring tournament: $40 a player, due Friday.

Your phone shows a stack of payment-app notifications. Most have a name you recognize. One comes from a username that matches no family on the team, with the note “for tourney!!” Two checks are on the counter, and one is made out to you instead of the team. There’s an envelope of cash with a last name on it and $60 inside, which is either one and a half players or one player and something else. A text arrives: “Did we pay? I think my husband sent it.”

You mark seventeen paid. Or eighteen. Tomorrow you’ll remind the six who haven’t, and one of them will reply, a little hurt, that they paid two weeks ago.

Collecting money is a job of its own

Nobody signs up to lead a group because they enjoy collecting money. But every campout, tournament, field trip and costume order comes with it, and it costs more than the evenings it takes:

• The awkward reminders. Asking a friend for $40 is uncomfortable. Asking a friend who already paid is worse.
• The spots you can’t fill. A family says yes and never pays, and you hold their place until it’s too late to offer it to anyone else.
• The money you front. The campsite wants its deposit by Friday, so you pay it yourself and wait to be paid back.
• The records you can’t reconstruct. By the end of the season, nobody can say for sure what came in for what, and that’s how money can go missing without anyone noticing.

Why it’s so messy

The problem isn’t the people. It’s that the money and the information about it travel separately.

• The money comes in four ways. Cards, a payment app, checks and cash, each with its own place to look.
• None of them knows what it’s for. A payment app shows a name, an amount and whatever note the payer felt like writing. A check shows a signature. Cash shows nothing at all.
• None of them knows who’s coming. The RSVPs live in one place and the money in four others, and you’re the only one who can match them up.
• Real life is untidy. One payment covers two kids. A family pays half now and half later. A child gets sick, and someone needs a refund.

Payment apps are built for splitting dinner with friends, and they’re good at that. They were never built to tell a treasurer which of 24 players is paid up for which event.

What helps, whatever you use

1. Ask for the money with the RSVP, not after it. A yes with a payment is a real yes. A yes without one is a maybe.
2. Set a deadline, and say what happens after it. “Pay by Friday to hold your spot” is clear, and it’s fair to the other families who’d like a spot.
3. Ask for a note on every payment: the child’s name and the event. It takes the payer a moment and saves you the guesswork.
4. Keep one list, and record every payment on it the day it comes in, whether it came by card, app, check or cash.
5. Deposit cash and checks the same week, with two people counting. The money talk has the simple habits that protect your group and your treasurer.
6. Make reminders kind and specific. “Hi! Our list shows Sam’s $40 for the spring tournament isn’t in yet. If you’ve already paid, just reply and I’ll fix our list. Thank you!” leaves room for your list to be wrong, because sometimes it is.
7. Use the group’s account, never a personal one. It keeps the money and the records together, and it keeps you out of the middle.

Why we built Grouperly the way we did

We built Grouperly so that money and information arrive together.

• Pay when you RSVP. Families answer for each of their kids and pay in the same step, by card, with a receipt. You can hold a spot until they pay.
• Card payments know what they’re for. Each is tied to the family, the children and the event or store item, so there’s nothing to match.
• Cash and checks go on the same list. Record cash, checks and payments from other apps against each family, so one list shows who’s paid, however they paid. Cash and checks are tracked until they’re deposited.
• The reminders aren’t you. A payment-due reminder goes out on its own, so you don’t have to be the one asking.
• Refunds and the report are built in. Refund a card payment in Grouperly, and the treasurer can download the money records whenever they need them.
• The money goes to the group. Card payments land in your group’s own Stripe account, paid out weekly to the bank account you connect.

On the Free plan, online payments cost Stripe’s card fee plus a 1% Grouperly fee; on Grouperly Plus, just Stripe’s fee. The fees show before anyone pays, and a payer can choose to add a contribution toward them. See pricing for the details, or read how cash and checks work.

Take Sunday night back

There will always be a family who pays in cash, and that’s fine. The goal isn’t to make everyone pay the same way. It’s to make sure every payment, however it comes, lands on one list with a name on it, so that “who’s paid?” has an answer on one list, instead of an evening of matching.