How swim club bond refunds are paid out (the check run)

Open Money → Check run to pay approved bond refunds and other refund checks.

Near the top of the page, See the email opens the treasurer notice that goes out when a refund check is queued, so you can preview it or change its wording under Automatic emails. You return here when you are done.

1. Review the refund check, household, amount, and mailing details.

2. Select Approve when the refund is ready to pay. That moves it to the check-writing queue. (If your club turned it on, you can approve several waiting checks in one step; see "Approve several waiting checks at once" below.)

3. Once the check is written and mailed, enter its number and select Mark check sent. That is the point where the bond balance goes down.

4. Select Mark cleared after the check clears the bank.

Void removes a check from the check run, before the check has been sent.

A refund check for a household that left the club can include the household's account credit (see How to resign a swim club membership). Voiding that check puts the credit back on the household's account, with the same expiry date it had. The Void confirmation says how much, for example "The $150.00 of account credit in it goes back on the household's account." The household's history and the monthly review show the credit coming back as its own line, dated the day you voided the check.

The CSV export always includes every approved check, whatever search, status filter or page you are looking at. Each row's buttons act on that one check only.

Each row's household name opens that household's Billing & bond tab, where you can check the bond balance and mailing address before you write the check.

A check run payment is separate from card and ACH refunds. Do not mark a check mailed until it is actually sent. See How to resign a swim club membership.

Approving a lot of refund checks one by one is slow, so a club can turn on a quicker way. It is off until an admin turns it on in Club → Payments, under Refund checks (the setting is Approve several refund checks at once on Check run). A treasurer can see that setting but only an admin can change it. While it is off, nothing below applies and you approve one check at a time, as described above.

When it is on, a tick box appears beside every check that is Awaiting approval. A check in any other step has no box.

1. Tick the checks you want. The box at the top of the column ticks every waiting check on the page you are looking at. You can tick up to 50 checks at a time, and only from the page on screen. If you change the page, the search or the status filter, your ticks are cleared.

2. Select Review approval. A panel opens beside the page. It shows how many checks you ticked and what they add up to, then lists each check in the order they are on the page: the household, who the check is made out to, the mailing address, the type, the amount and the memo. For a bond refund it also shows the bond the household has on deposit now. For a check that carries account credit it says how much credit is in it. A household name opens that household in a new tab, so your ticks and the review stay as they are. If any checks have a warning, or any ticked check is left out, the panel says so just under the heading. The panel also says No money moves yet. After you write and mail each check, you mark it sent. Nothing has been approved at this point.

3. Read the warnings. A check can carry one of two warnings:

   • Warning: more than the bond on deposit now. The bond refund is bigger than the bond the household has on deposit today. You can still approve it, but you won't be able to mark it sent. To leave it out, go back and untick it. To fix it, void it and create a new refund check from the household's page for the amount still owed.

   • Made out to someone other than the household's name. This is only for your information. Check that it is what you meant.

4. Select the approve button. It repeats the count and the total, for example Approve 12 checks · $9,600.00. Every check in the panel is approved together.

A ticked check that stopped waiting for approval after you ticked it, for example because another treasurer approved or voided it, is listed in the panel under Left out, and the panel says how many ticked checks were left out because they are no longer waiting for approval. It is not approved. If none of the ticked checks can be approved any more, the panel says so and has only Go back.

All or nothing

Approving checks together is all or nothing. Just before it approves, Swim Ops looks at every check again. If anything changed since you opened the review, none of the checks is approved. The panel's heading becomes The approval did not go through, it says that nothing was approved, and it offers Review again. What counts as a change:

• a check was voided or approved by someone else

• a check's amount, payee or mailing address changed

• for a bond refund, the household's bond on deposit changed

There is nothing to undo when this happens. Review again, read the new figures, and approve if they still look right.

After you approve

A message at the top of the page says how many checks were approved and the total, reminds you to write and mail each check and then mark it sent, and links to the export of approved checks. The checks move to the check-writing queue and show as Approved.

Approving moves no money. For each check you still write and mail it, enter its number and select Mark check sent, one check at a time. The household's bond balance goes down only when you mark a check sent. Mark cleared and Void also stay one check at a time, and the Approve button on a single row still works with this turned on.

Each approved check gets its own Refund check approved entry in the audit log, the same as approving it alone. Under Show what changed, the entry records that the check was approved as part of a group.

A connected AI assistant can ask for the same group approval. It has to review the checks first, and the request waits for approval on the website like other money actions. The amount above which a money action needs a typed code (Approval limits in Club settings) is judged against the total of the whole group.