What payment groups can do for your church

A payment group is a special group type that takes registrations, and payment where there’s any to take. One tool covers conference bookings, free toddler groups, online giving and monthly subscriptions, which is why it’s worth ten minutes to understand before you build your first one. The video below is a quick tour.

What you can do with one

1. Event bookings, paid or free. Tickets with fixed prices, choices like seminar and meal options, sub-options, and limits on numbers and ages, so the venue never oversells and children land in the right sessions. Free events get a simple complete-registration button with no payment screens at all.
2. Donations. One-off, monthly or annual giving with built-in Gift Aid declarations, and for UK churches an HMRC integration to claim it back as often as you like.
3. Subscriptions. Recurring payments handle anything with a regular fee, from a Bible school to a weekly club.
4. Deposits and balances. Take part of the money upfront and the rest nearer the time, on a schedule you set.
5. Data collection. Every registration can gather contact details, consent, custom fields and choices, with questions that appear only for children or only for adults; it all lands in one integrated place.

Good to know

• A little vocabulary: the person paying or registering is making a registration (called a donation, subscription or enrolment depending on the group type), the person who makes a booking is the booker, and the people attending are delegates. A parent booking a child onto holiday club is a booker but not a delegate.
• It’s fast for your members: logged in, their details pre-fill and their saved card means paying with just its last four digits, on the website or in the app.
• Running lots of events? Don’t squeeze them into one group: reusing payment groups for repeating events shows the template-clone-archive pattern that keeps a busy calendar tidy.
• Everything is integrated with your member database and reports, and the rates are set with churches in mind rather than commercial fees.
• Ready to build? Start with how to set up a payment group, and when life happens later, changes and cancellations are covered too.