paying club subscriptions online and claiming gift aid

[dorothymichaels]

It's subscription season for cubs and guides in our house and I never remember to have enough cash to send with them when subs are due! I've told the leader I'll help with claiming gift aid for subs and wondering if I can kill two birds with one stone and help them with collecting subs online (as an option) too.

Does anyone do this? If so, is it by PayPal or another service? Do you also get the option for the club to claim gift aid? Any advice welcomed!

There's something that can help with this - let me see if I can remember what it's called ...

Thank you travailtotravel

I used to play Explorer subs through a service that I think was Virgin.

Cubs/Scouts was by standing order monthly.

Also meant I had a record

Ours use 'myscout' (think it's also called online scout manager) and it allows you to pay all subs and camps / additional activities online as well as register for gift aid and several other tasks such as see the programme for the term, badges taken, update emergency contacts, send group wide emails to parents etc. It's a very cool system.

Thank you folks! I’ll check these out.

Late to the party, but our Brownies pay through bank transfer. Seems to suit the vast majority (with the rest happy to pay cash).

My boys group use the MyScout system which partners up with GoCardless to deal with the money side of it all.

Even later to the party but the potential equivalent to Myscout is a product called online guide manager. Girlguiding units are not allowed to use it as it doesn't comply with our data protection guidelines.

So late to the party I’m early for the next one!

Guider here and our parents either pay by cheque or bank transfer (which is better for me). My dds’ Guide/SS groups encourage bank transfer too.

Cubs insist on weekly payment of cash subs which is a pita. It’s intended to encourage the Cubs to take responsibility themselves but actually it just means I’m running round raiding money boxes on Cub night!

The older dc Explorer group asks for monthly SO which is the easiest for me!

As for the Gift Aid, it was a pain to set up but now I just complete a form with HMRC to claim it back. I have my accounts set up for Gift Aid / Non GA and regularly send out reminders to parents to let us know if we can GA their subs payments.

I would however be over the moon if one of my parents offered to take over the books/subs/Gift Aid side of things

WebCollect is a popular option geared at sports clubs etc. - there is an annual fee, but groups I know that use it reckon it’s worth it for the hassle it saves.