How to set up a payment group

A payment group is a special kind of group that takes registrations, and money if there’s any to take, for events, donations, subscriptions and courses. This guide walks the core settings; the deep-dive video below covers the same ground on screen.

Setting up the group

1. Create a new group in the right place in your structure, choosing the payment group type, then open its settings. The first tab is an accordion of sections you can open and close.
2. Under Properties, name the group and decide whether it shows in your website menus and search results. Tick both if the payment group will stand alone as a page; untick both if you’re embedding it in an existing article with a module, so visitors don’t find the same thing twice. There’s also a redirect option here, handy for quietly diverting visitors elsewhere once registrations have closed.
3. Under Registration, set the payment group type: event, donation, subscription or course. This changes the language people see (delegates, donors and so on) and hides tabs that don’t apply. Then set the schedule for when registrations open and close, so nobody books after the event; choose whether anyone can register or only logged-in members; and link the event if you’ll use age-restricted options or check people in on the day.
4. Still in Registration, decide whether people can register more than once (essential for donations), whether they can change a registration after completing it, and whether registrations need an admin’s approval before they’re confirmed.
5. Under the payment settings, choose whether to accept offline payments as well as online; offline keeps things accessible for people who won’t pay by card, at the cost of you marking payments as received yourself. Set zero-total registrations to be treated as offline, which gives free bookings a simple complete-registration button instead of payment screens.
6. Attach your terms and conditions as an article if you need them signed, write the introductory text that appears above the registration options (this is the page’s main content, so say everything important here), and keep the confirmation text short.
7. Register on your own group as a test before you share the link.

Good to know

• The deeper tabs have guides of their own: what information you collect, tickets, options and limits, deposits and recurring payments, and confirmation emails and e-tickets. For the tour of what’s possible, start with what payment groups can do for your church.
• Once one payment group is set up the way you like, copy it for the next event rather than starting from scratch.
• Payment groups display in full in your church app. Under Properties, the ‘Include in app section’ option lets you place the group in one of your two payment group lists; the dropdown shows the lists by whatever you’ve named them, such as ‘Donate’ or ‘Book now’. One catch: the list itself must be switched on in the app, under Settings > App > Settings, or the group won’t appear no matter what you pick here. You can still embed a payment group in an existing article with the payment group module if you’d rather it live inside a page you already have.
• On the Design tab, make sure the group uses or inherits your content page design so it looks like the rest of your site, and the Permissions tab controls who can administer it. There’s also an advanced section with group custom fields and a custom code box; most churches never need either.