[Solved] How to manage Member expenses pre-paid by your organisation, and paid back by your Members

In this scenario, your club has made an advanced bulk payment on-behalf of 50 members to attend an overseas conference. You will claim this expense back from your members who may repay the amount either completely or in instalments. 

This can be managed in Clubtreasurer using the Financial and Membership Management features as follows:

1. Record the initial advanced bulk payment made by your club
2. Optional: create a debtor entry for the advanced payment, if you need to record Debtor balances in your accounts.
3. Create membership payment plans for the 50 members for the individual amounts due to be repaid
4. Record and manage the member payments received by the club against their individual payment plans
5. Optional: reduce the debtor balance as member payments are received, if you are tracking Debtors in your accounts

 

1. Record the initial advanced bulk payment made by your club

Use Receipt/Payment Transactions to record this:

• Create a new Payment transaction(s):
  • Date = date your made the payment(s)
  • Account = Bank Account (or where payment was made from)
  • Cost Code = Select or create an appropriate Payment Cost Code 
  • Amount  = Enter the payment amount  (eg. £1000)

 

2. Optional: create a debtor balance for the advance payment, if you need to report Debtor balances in your accounts

If you produce accrual accounts, or need to report debtors, you will also need to create a Debtor transaction in your accounts for the advanced payment. You will do this by creating a Negative Payment transaction against your DEBTOR account => This will create a Debtor balance in your Balance Sheet/SOAL and cancel out the initial advance payment (Step 1) in you P&L (ie. this is not a trading expense and should not be reported in your P&L)

• Create a new Receipt transaction:
  • Date = same as Step 1
  • Account = DEBTORS
  • Cost Code = same as Step 1
  • Amount  = Enter the negative of value in Step 1 (eg. -£1000)

 

3. Create membership payment plans for the 50 members for the individual amounts due to be repaid

You will use Membership Management for Steps 3 & 4

• In Memberships create a new Membership Category = "Overseas Conferences"  (Optional) 
• In Memberships create a new Membership for the “Overseas Conference 2023” (under the Category above)

• • Billing Cycle = One-Time
  • Current Fee =  Enter fee (if fixed for all Members) or tick Custom Fee if the expense amount is not fixed or unknown
• Use the Mass Membership Assignment feature to quickly assign this membership to all 50 Members. 

• • NB If you used a Custom Fee you will need to enter this now, and note this Fee will be applied to all selected Members. You may need to run this process more than once to different sets of Members if the Fees are different.

4. Record and manage the member payments received by the club against individual payment plans

Now, you can just record the Member payments / part-payments in the same way as you would for all other memberships. The system will hold the outstanding balance for each Member.

 

5. Optional: reduce the debtor balance as member payments are received (if you did Step 2)

If you did Step 2 to create a Debtor balance, you should also create a Negative Receipt transaction against the DEBTOR account when your Members make their payments to the club. This will reduce its balance on your Balance Sheet/SOAL and cancel out the Membership Receipt in your P&L (ie. this is not trading income).

NB - You will only need to create a single summary transaction for the total Membership payments received in the accounting period (you can use the Membership Receipts & Payments Report to find this amount)

• Create a new Receipt transaction:
  • Date =  End of Accounting Period
  • Account = DEBTORS
  • Cost Code = same as Membership Receipt transactions in Step 4.
  • Amount  = Negative of total period Membership receipts for these transactions

 

Other considerations:

• If you are not managing a Debtor balance, you may still want the track the overall Payment balance. You can create a new Fund and use this in all related transactions. So, when the club makes the initial payment (Payment) you would charge this against the new Fund to create a negative balance. Similarly, record the Member payments (Receipts) against this Fund to increase the balance => When this reaches zero, you will have recouped all the costs from your Members. 

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