Payment Groups Deep Dive Transcript 

Hopefully, you have watched my first video to give you an overview of what payment groups are, what they can do, and why they are a great option for your church events, donations, or subscriptions. To give you a detailed look at all of the settings in a payment group, I've got this deep dive video. Please feel free to pause the video and take notes. I also suggest getting a strong cup of tea or coffee and some biscuits. 

To start off, let's go through some of the terminology for payment groups that it would be helpful to know. Firstly, when someone registered on a payment group, the terminology differs depending on the type of payment group you are using. For a conference or event, we use the term 'registration'. For a donation group, we use 'donation'. For a subscription, we say 'subscription'. And for a course, we use the term 'enrolment'. But we often use the term 'registration' for any registration in any payment group. 

For this video, I'm going to show you my prayer conference payment group and click into its settings. The first tab of settings contains a few areas in our accordion-style menu. You can open and close the items by clicking on each section. 

The first is 'properties'. These have options that are consistent with other groups in Hubb. Some you will use, and some you won't. Here, you can edit the name of the payment group, write a description, and add a summary image. The description and image are useful if the payment group is used in a feed. But most of the time you won't need to worry about these. Next, we have a group redirect. Which, again, is not something you will need, as generally, people who land on this group will be registering for the event. However, it could be useful if a registration is closed and you quickly need to divert visitors to the page away. You can also tick if you would like the group to be shown in the website user menus, on the user side. And also, if you would like it shown in search results. I have turned these off, because I have used a module to embed this payment group into an existing article on my site. It's in the article in the prayer conference group. If I tick the box to show in the menus, it would show both the page with the module in, and the payment group, which is not good. I just want one group to show in the menu. Also, if someone searches for the payment group, I don't want two separate search results. I just want the page I already have. 

It is possible to use a payment group without embedding a module in the page. And if you do that, then it's a good idea to tick both these options. The reason I have added the payment group module to my article is so that I can add the article as an area on the app. Right now, it's not possible to add a payment group to the app without doing it this way. We are changing this soon, and I'll have this video updated to show you how to do this. 

Moving on to more payment group-specific settings. Let's open up the registration area. We can change the payment group type. What this does is change the language used in certain places of your payment group. For example, if it's a donation group, then people who pay will be referred to as donors as opposed to delegates when someone registers for an event. Also, some tabs, like discounts and tickets, are not used for donations. So, we hide them for you. 

Next, we have a schedule for when you allow people to register on the payment group. This is useful so you can create the group ahead of time and restrict registrations until you are ready. It's also great for saying when people will stop registering, to avoid people booking after the event by accident, or looking like your website is not up to date. You can choose who can register for this group. Would you like to allow only logged-in members? Or are you happy for anyone to register? Later, I'll show you where you can let non-logged-in people have a profile created with login access to view and amend their registration. By default, they are not added to your main database. But there is a way of doing that too. As I said, I'll show you that later in the video. 

The linked event option is used if you are using the check in feature for recording who attends the event. It is also used for calculating the age of a delegate for age restricted options. For example, in the member choices, you can set options to only be bookable by people who will be a certain age at the date of an event. This is very useful for booking children into the correct sessions. 

The next set of options lets you say if you would like to allow repeating registrations from people, so they can book more than once. This is really useful for donations. You can also say if you would like people to change their registration. This is useful if plans change and people need to amend their booking. There are also options here if you would like registrations and any changes to require approval by an admin before the registrations are approved and confirmed. You can use this to take total control over who you allow to register on your payment group. 

Next, we move on to the payment settings. There are just two things to consider here. Firstly, would you like to accept online and offline payments? Accepting offline payments requires a bit more admin on your side as the registrations will be accepted, but our system will say that payment is due. When you do receive payments, you will need to update the registration to ‘paid’. Of course, having this option does make registering more accessible for people who may not feel comfortable paying online. And then, how would you like to treat registrations that equal zero? Setting this to ‘treat as offline’ can speed up the user journey for people when they book, as the payment options are removed. 

The terms and conditions setting allow you to make sure people sign your terms and conditions when registering, and create an article in Hubb and attach it here. This is useful if you need the same terms to be used again and again. The introductory text is the information that will appear above the registration options. Here, you can put in as much information as you'd like about the payment group. Because the payment group can be placed in the website menu and navigation, adding information here will make it look like any other group and page on your site. The confirmation text is displayed once the registration is successful. I would suggest keeping this short, and all important information about the payment group be added to the introductory text. 

Lastly, we have some advanced settings for adding content via group custom fields, which is a relatively rare use case. As well as a custom code box for more technical people to manipulate how the payment group is displayed. 

So, let's move on to the next tab and look at the data you wish to collect as people make a registration. We have given you a lot of flexibility for the data you wish to collect. This is so you can create simple and more complex registration setups. The first question to answer is if you would like to allow people to register for other people. This is useful for couples, families, or churches where you would like to register more than one person. The next setting allows you to personalise the language used when you add another person to your registration that is not already in your family on your Hubb account. To speed up future registrations, it's good to have people in their families. 

Next is where you choose the data for the booker, and also the delegates. The delegate fields only appear if you have chosen to allow other people to be booked in as well. One important thing to remember is that a person can register delegates, but not themselves. So, a booker is not necessarily a delegate. However, most of the time bookers come to the event. So, they are delegates as well. An example of where a booker is not a delegate would be if a parent is booking their child onto a holiday club. The parent is not going, but they are making the booking. 

Depending on the event you are running, you will want to take various information for the booker, and specific information for the delegates. For each field, you can set whether to hide the field, let it be optional, mandatory, or to be set depending on the age of the person. For age-dependent options, you will need to have a date of birth field or an age category field as mandatory, so the system knows the age of the person. When you select a field to be dependent on age, you can set whether it is hidden, optional, or mandatory for adults or children. 

The last option at the bottom is to see if you would like to create user accounts in Hubb for people once the booking is completed. If you say yes for any of these options, an email will be sent to welcome them and give a link to set a password. You will need a mandatory email address field set for this to work. It's important to note that these people will be able to log in and see their information and registration details, but they will not get added to your main database. The email they will receive for membership will be your welcome email that can be found in settings under system emails. So, it's worth checking that this is appropriate for these people. By default it is, but you may have changed it from the initial content we gave you. 

One reason to create an account for people is so their details are recorded in the system when they come to book or donate again. For bookers, their payment details are securely stored to make booking again quicker, especially in the app. 

The next tab is payment schemes. Think of these as schedules of when payments are taken. The most popular use case is to have one scheme which takes payments straight away. Within a payment scheme, you can also set if you would like the gift aid options to appear. You can set when the payment is taken. For example, if people are booking for an event in a few months' time, you can set the payment to be taken nearer the time of the event. You can also set how long a person has membership to the payment group for. In most cases, it will be set to unlimited. You only really use the monthly membership setting if the ‘recurring payment’ setting is ticked below. This is what is used for monthly donations or any subscription you may have. A time where you may have more than one payment scheme with different settings would be if you have a big event in the future that you want to take an initial deposit for, and then take the balance at a later date. In the next tab, you can set how much should be taken upfront as a deposit, and how much as a final balance. But in our feedback so far, we have found that most organisations prefer simpler setups where they simply take all of the money straight away. But the option for deposits is there if you need it. 

The next tab is ‘Delegate choices’. This is where the booker picks what they're paying for, and you can set up lots of various options. We have organised these into options that contain choices for people to pick. You can set up as many options as you like, with as many choices in each option. You can also add sub-options to your choices. Here, my first option is called ‘Tickets’. As I have two choices available for people to choose from: an adult ticket or a creche ticket. They are both set as unselected by default, but you can choose to have them mandatory, selected by default, disabled, hidden, or for admins only. As I have selected this choice affects the price, I can set the pricing details below. My adult ticket is set to be a fixed amount of £35, and it will use the upfront payment scheme so payment is taken straight away. For donation payment groups, you would have these set to variable. 

There are a few other tools we can take advantage of for these choices. Firstly, you can add a sub-option. I already have one below called ‘Prayer Diary’. And if I open it up, you can see it is asking if the person would like to purchase an optional prayer diary for £5. You can also choose a group that a person will be added to if they select this choice. This is great for keeping your church member involvement up to date, or to use more of the features in Hubb within the group context. There is also an extra description box if you would like to explain the choice further. 

Lastly, there are some limits you can set on each choice. Firstly, there is a limit on the number of people that can register for this choice. This is great for ticket limits. You can also set minimum and maximum age limits on choices. This is useful if you have children you are booking into an event, and you would like to set age specific sessions. Hubb will only make available the choices for the delegate that are available based on their date of birth. If you have a linked event set, the age will be the age of the person at the date of the event. If no linked event is set, it will be the age at the time of booking. In my example, I have another option called ‘Lunch’, and it offers people a choice of hot or cold lunch, where the hot lunch is charged extra, and the cold lunch is free. 

The last thing to show you on this tab is the setting for the amount of choices a person can select within an option. Next to the option name, you can say a user must select between any number of choices. If you set this to be between one and one, then the interface will have radio buttons where a user can only pick one choice. And you have to pick a choice. If you allow people to select more than one, then they will be shown as tick boxes. If you select from zero, then these will be optional. 

Let's jump out to the website and have a look at how this payment group looks. We can see the introductory text at the top and the registration details below. Let's go through and make a registration. We can add ourselves to the booking. Select our tickets. Add an extra prayer diary. Choose our lunch option and the actual meal choice. Click OK. We can add as many other members of the family as we'd like. And when we're finished, we can click on checkout. Add any discounts in. And then, make payments. And of course, here, because I'm a member, my card is saved. I just have to put the last four digits in, and then click complete registration. 

The options and choices are very flexible and we recommend creating a test payment group and having a play to get the set up you like. Remember: once you have a payment group set up you can copy it for future uses so you do not have to start from scratch each time. 

The next tab is discounts. This is where you set the criteria for any discounts you wish to offer. You can choose to get a fixed price discount, or a percentage, by creating criteria based on who they are and what they are booking, as well as creating specific discount or voucher codes. Again, this is an area that we recommend you having a play, and seeing what you can achieve to suit your requirements, as it's really flexible. If you need a hand with discounts, just email our support team and we will be happy to help. 

The next section to look at is all about the email confirmations that get sent to the booker and the delegates. My payment group is set to auto-approve registrations, so I just have two confirmation emails. One for the booker with all the booking information, and one for each delegate that contains their personal booking information. If I were to change the payment group so each registration requires approval, then you will see additional emails for when the booking is confirmed but not yet approved. You can choose to have that email sent to the booker and delegates, or not. The important thing here is to check you have a nice-looking email ready. If not, then please get in touch with our support team and we will help you, as we can easily get nice HTML emails that look good and work well on all devices. 

The main things you may want to change on this page are the from and subject lines. If you do edit this email template, then be sure to keep the registration options mail merge fields, as that is what contains their registration information. 

We're about to move on to the next section, which is about digital and physical tickets. If you do use these you will want to come back here and add the required mail merge fields to your email. The fields you can include are the e-ticket number, e-ticket barcode, and a link to a printable ticket. The e-ticket barcode can be used to scan people into events when they arrive if you want to use our check-in feature. So, let's go to the tickets tab. This is where you build the ticket. The best way to do this is to upload a letterhead or ticket template. Set the area that is excluded from the booking details being added to the page, and then set which fields you would like to add. Here is an example of a ticket I have created. 

Lastly, the two final tabs are for permissions and design. We have separate videos on permissions, and we will include a link for that in the notes below. In terms of design, you need to make sure that the payment group is either using or inheriting your content page design, so it will look like your other content pages on your site. So, that's the deep dive into payment groups. I hope you managed to get through the whole video, and you can move on to setting up a payment group and use this for your church or ministry.