Using Squaddle for payments

Squaddle lets you collect activity fees directly from squad members – handling payment links, reminders, and refunds in one place. This article covers setting up payments, tracking who's paid, sending reminders, and settling outstanding balances.

Setting up payments on an activity

When you create an activity, you can choose whether to collect payments and how. You'll see two options, but in both cases members receive a payment link alongside their activity invitation, by email or WhatsApp.

Anytime

With Anytime payments enabled, members can pay before or after the activity. This tends to work best for small groups with a high degree of trust, where organisers are happy for members to build up a small debt and settle up later.

A payment link is sent with the activity invitation, but the amount isn't due until the activity takes place. That means it won't appear in the 'Outstanding payments' list until the event has passed.

Upfront

If you choose Upfront payments, members must pay to confirm their place. This is useful for bigger groups and if you want to reduce the risk of no-shows.

Your invitations will include a message to say that payments is required upfront – if they mark themselves 'In', we'll send them a link to complete payment.

Upfront payments don't apply to participants who have been marked 'In' automatically before invitations are sent out, or to members who are marked 'In' by an admin. They'll still be invited to pay, but it's not a condition of their place for the activity.

Setting a price

The price you set is charged per participant, not per activity. The price is entirely at your discretion.

A few things worth knowing before you set a price:

• The price is fixed at creation and can't be changed later. This applies to both single and repeating activities. If you need to change the price, you'll need to cancel the activity and recreate it.
• The price doesn't adjust based on the number of participants. If fewer players show up than expected, the per-person fee stays the same. Most organisers account for this by setting a price based on the average turnout.

Most organisers work out the price for an activity by dividing the cost of hiring a venue or pitch by the number of players they expect, sometimes rounding it up to build in a small buffer for unforeseen costs.

For repeating activities, working out the price based on the cost of a block booking and average number of players each week is a useful way to keep the per-person cost consistent week to week – we don't recommend setting the price by dividing your costs by the maximum number of participants unless you're confident everyone will show up every week.

Charging late dropouts

When you create an activity, you'll be given an option to 'Charge late dropouts' for your activities. This disables automatic refunds for players who cancel less than 24 hours before an activity starts.

If they've already paid, somebody dropping out within this 24-hour window will not be refunded. If they haven't paid in advance, the unpaid fee will be added to their outstanding payments.  

Managing payments and refunds

Once payments are set up, day-to-day tasks like checking who's paid, sending reminders, recording payments manually are covered by a separate article: Managing payments. Refunds are covered in Managing outstanding payments & refunds.

If you cancel the activity, everyone who paid is refunded immediately – and all late dropout charges for that activity are waived.