Are you fed up of numerous trips to the bank with club members' cheques or cash? Do you already collect money online but get charged high fees?

Wouldn't it be easier if the money for club subscriptions fees was paid straight into the club's bank account? British Cycling's Club Management Tool offers this functionality, free of charge, to all of our affiliated clubs and teams.

To get started you will need to have access to the Club Management Tool. Once you get into the Club Manager dashboard you need to go to the ‘club membership‘ area. It is a good idea to ensure your club's membership list is up to date when managing club membership and subscriptions. Please see our guide on managing club members.

To start the process of setting up subscriptions, there is a button at the top of the Membership Manager screen that says ’manage club subscription fees‘. The first time you click on this you will see a screen asking you to input details of the club bank account; once you have done this, our finance team will set up your account giving you full access to subscription collection (usually within three working days).

Once your account is set-up, you will be able to create subscriptions and once you have created your subscription it will be available to buy on the British Cycling website. You have a variety of options when setting up subscriptions. You can set-up subscriptions for individuals, couples and families and use a variety of other options to suit your different club membership types.

Custom data

You can use custom fields to ask for the information you need about your club members when they are buying club subscriptions. You can set these up using the using the ’manage custom fields‘. You have a variety of different fields to choose from;

Text: You can free type into this field.

Decimal/Integer: For numeric data.

Date/Time: Stores date and time information (e.g. date first joined club).

Yes/No: A question that can only be answered yes or no.

Checkbox: Good for agreeing to policies or where members have opted in to something.

Select List: Select one answer from a pre-defined list.

Select Multiple: Similar to select list but you can select multiple answers.

Once you have set up custom fields, they will appear in the setup/edit subscription screen. This allows you to select which custom fields you want people buying certain subscriptions to complete. This allows you, for example, to add different custom fields for a junior subscription than you would for an adult subscription.

Accepting subscriptions

You can decide how your subscriptions are accepted. You can set the subscriptions to be accepted automatically, which means as soon as someone buys the subscription their payment is taken and they are added to your list of club members. Alternatively you can choose to accept each subscription manually; if you select this option you will need to log into the tool each time someone buys a subscription, in this case their card will not be charged until you click accept.

Free of charge to clubs

There is no charge to the club for using this service. The person buying the subscription is charged a £1 fee per subscription. This fee allows British Cycling to remain cost-neutral in the provision of the online subscription service. Should your club wish to absorb the cost, then simply adjust the subscription price down by £1.

Get the word out

Once you have set up your subscriptions, they are live and for sale on the British Cycling website. To see the page on which they appear, simply go to your club's public profile page - you can access this through the Club Profile section of the Club Management Tool or by looking up your club on the Club Finder. You will see on this page a red button which reads ’buy club membership‘. Clicking the button will take you to your club’s subscriptions page; to share the link, simply copy and paste the link into an email or you may wish to set up a link directly to the page on your club website.

Renewals

The system makes it very easy for you to send a reminder to your club members when it is time to renew their club membership.

You can set a club member expiry date against all of your members whether they have paid online or not and then you can sort by this date and send out a reminder email directing them to the subscriptions page (see the section abovefor further details). If their club membership expires they will move to expired club members tab - you can directly email members from this tab as well.

We recommend that you check your subscriptions in the subscription manager before you send out any renewal notice. You may need to edit your subscriptions, or even create new ones, to reflect any changes in prices, terms and conditions or club rules.

The renewal system is not automated to ensure that it works for all clubs regardless of their individual policies on membership and renewals.

Help and support

For further assistance with setting up and selling Club Subscriptions using the British Cycling Club Management Tool please see our FAQs. If you can't find the answer to your question or have any other queries regarding subscription collection please email clubs@britishcycling.org.uk.