How swim club late fees, extensions, and termination work

Use the renewal and household records to handle overdue dues. The deadline and late-fee policy are configured in Settings. Automatic late fees are only available when dues are billed once a year; a club that bills quarterly or monthly charges a fee by hand (see Membership renewals and dues billing).

If your club charges automatic late fees, a household that hasn't paid by the dues deadline gets the late fee and moves to the Past due list on Members → Renewals, under Collection. Once bills have gone out for the year, Collection sits near the top of that page. Everyone in the household gets a "Late fee added" email. Its standard small print asks them to reply if they think the fee is wrong only when your club has a reply-to address for member email in Settings; otherwise it points them to Contact us in the member portal. From a household's row there, a manager or admin can select Waive late fee and give a reason. Waive it there rather than with an adjustment on the invoice: a hand-added line doesn't clear the row, so the fee could be waived twice. A household that has already paid its dues in full gets no late fee, even if its dues invoice still shows as open. A dues invoice that already has a late fee on it, added by hand or by an earlier run and waived or not, never gets a second one; the household still moves to Past due on the deadline, without a second "Late fee added" email. An automatic bank payment that has started but not finished never gets a late fee beside it. And while Stripe is refusing your club's automatic payments because of how the club's Stripe account is set up, an autopay household whose automatic payment was due and couldn't be taken gets no late fee; the usual rules return once payments go through to Stripe again (see Autopay and saved payment methods). If a household paid its dues late and you waive the fee, nothing is left to pay, so the invoice is marked paid and the renewal shows as paid. If the household has a payment page open for the dues when you waive the fee, that page is closed first so they can't pay the old amount. If it can't be closed (they are in the middle of paying, a bank transfer is on its way, or Stripe couldn't be reached), the waiver is refused with a message that says which, and nothing is changed.

Without automatic late fees (late fees off, or quarterly or monthly billing), no household moves to Past due. Use the Unpaid filter on the renewal list to see who hasn't paid, and charge a fee by hand if your club wants one (see "Can I charge late fees if we bill quarterly or monthly?" in Membership renewals and dues billing).

Either way, you can give a household more time: open its Billing & bond tab, enter a new date under Extend to with a reason, and select Grant extension. That moves only this household's deadline; if your club charges automatic late fees, none is added before the new date. The new date has to be after today and after your club's dues deadline, or, if your club hasn't saved one, after the date the household's bill is due.

Terminate is offered only on the Past due list, so it needs automatic late fees. When a past-due household isn't renewing and any extension has passed, a manager or admin can select Terminate on its row to end the membership for non-payment. Termination voids the unpaid dues invoice and keeps the household's history. If the household's dues invoice is paid, or nothing is left to pay on it, Terminate is refused: the household isn't behind on its dues, even if the renewal still says past due. Ask Swim Ops support to correct the renewal. Terminate is also refused while a payment on the dues invoice hasn't cleared: wait for the check to clear, or mark it returned if it bounced. See Membership renewals and dues billing.

The bond is not refunded automatically when you terminate: after termination succeeds, follow the link to the household's Billing & bond tab to queue any bond refund check.

Now and then one household hits a problem while its late fee is being added. The usual cause is a bank payment that started seconds earlier, because an invoice cannot be changed while a payment is settling.

That household is skipped. No fee was charged and no email was sent. Everyone else in the run is still charged, so one problem household no longer stops the rest.

Most skipped households are tried again the next night. A household whose bank payment was still settling is one of these: nothing was charged and nothing was recorded, so the run simply returns to it. If the payment goes through, the dues are paid and no fee is due. If it bounces, the next run adds the fee.

Every skipped household is tried again the next night: "skipped" always means no fee was added. If the fee was added and only the "Late fee added" email failed, that is reported separately as an email that could not be sent, and the fee stays on the invoice.

An alert goes out when a household is skipped. It is a different alert from the one about a late-fee notice that could not be emailed. Don't add the fee by hand: the run adds it once the problem clears, and it never adds a second late fee to an invoice that already has one. If the same alert keeps coming back night after night, the problem isn't clearing by itself; ask whoever supports your club to look up which households were skipped and sort out the cause.