How swim club membership waitlists and refundable bonds work

Use the membership waitlist to review applications, make offers, and track bond balances. Waitlist timing, application fees, and membership targets are configured in Settings.

Review an applicant before making an offer. The applicant has the time shown in the offer to accept and pay. Expired offers can move the next eligible applicant forward.

A join request that looks like a household already on file waits on Household reviews before it reaches this list. When any are waiting, the top of the Waitlist page says how many ("2 join requests may match a household already on file") and links to Household reviews.

Making an offer and emailing it are two different things, and the banner after you send says which happened. "Offer sent" means the email left the club's side. A message saying the offer was made but could not be emailed means the household's place is held and nothing was sent, usually because the address has never been confirmed, which is where every address imported from an old roster starts, or because a bounce was recorded earlier. Do not leave it: the offer expires on the same clock either way, so use Replace accept link on their row and send them the link yourself.

The card for sending offers sits just above the waitlist table, below the search and filters. When you offer to several households at once, the offers go to the top of the whole waiting list, even if you have the list searched or filtered, so check the names in the confirmation before you send. The card also says how many offers are safe to send now ("3 offers are safe to send now"), and warns you before you send more than that. The field tells you the real number as you type, and the number in the confirmation is the number actually sent. Afterwards the banner counts only the households that were emailed and names any it could not reach. Check those rows: each one is either still waiting, because the queue moved while the batch ran, or offered but not emailed, in which case use Replace accept link. Next to that card's text, See the email opens the membership-offer email under Messages → Automatic emails, so you can preview it or change its wording; when you are done you return here.

An applicant gets one "we've got your application" email, and only once it can reach them. Without an application fee, it goes out when they confirm their email address (the link in the confirmation email, or signing in). With a fee, it goes out when the fee is paid. Confirming an address never sends it twice.

The number a household is told is their place in line, counted one, two, three with no gaps among the households still waiting. That is the same number the waitlist table shows you, and it is what the portal and the application emails say. A household that has already accepted is shown no number at all.

Replace accept link creates a new link and shows it once, without emailing anything. Resend offer email sends the offer again with a new link. Neither extends the offer's expiry. If a resend cannot be delivered, including to a blocked address, it refuses and changes nothing, and tells you why. That is deliberate: replacing a link when the new one cannot be delivered would leave the household with no working link at all. The link already in their inbox keeps working.

Only if your club has turned it on. The emailed link works either way. An admin turns it on with Let members accept waitlist offers in the member portal (Club → Club info → Member portal). It is off until you turn it on, and it covers membership offers and camp offers. See Club settings.

With it on, an applicant who is signed in does not have to go back to their inbox:

• Home shows a Your membership offer card while the offer is open. It gives the last day to respond, the total due if they accept, how much of that is the refundable bond (when your club has one), and a note about the joining invoice. It says nothing is charged now.

• Accept the spot carries the total in its label, and its confirmation names the total again. Accepting creates the joining invoice and takes the household straight to it, to pay as usual.

• It is the same accept the link does, so the joining invoice, the payment deadline you set, the welcome email and the offer's expiry all behave the same. The audit log entry for the accept records whether it came through the link or the portal.

• If the total changed after the household opened the page (the initiation fee, bond or first year's dues were changed in Settings), nothing is created. The card says "The total is now $X, not $Y. Review it and accept again." and shows the new total. The page the emailed link opens does the same now, whether or not the portal setting is on.

• Once the offer's deadline has passed the card goes away and Home says the deadline has passed, as before. If the deadline passes, or your club turns the setting off, while the household has Home open, pressing Accept the spot shows the reason in the application section on Home instead of doing nothing.

With it off, Home looks as it always has, and a request to accept from the portal that someone builds by hand is refused, so the household uses the link in the offer email.

Staff can't accept on a household's behalf, and View as member can't either, because it is read-only. Members' own AI assistants and the API can't accept an offer: an assistant tells the member they can accept on the club's website and does not see the offer's link. Replace accept link is still how you reach a household that can't sign in. For a household that can, you can tell them to accept on Home when your club has this on.

Lap swim and event offers are always accepted from the emailed link. A Programming offer is accepted through that program's own Register button, which this setting does not change, or from the emailed link. A camp offer is accepted on the member's Camp page; see Camp and event waitlists.

If your club has turned on messaging a household (configured in Settings, under Club info), every row of the waitlist has a Message button. It opens a note to that household's adults, which you can start from a saved reply, and it can fill in their place in line for you. The note is saved in the household's Contact us page, where they can answer, and each person you tick is also emailed it.

Addresses that came in with an imported list start out not confirmed, and the club will not email an address until it is. The box shows these as "Not confirmed yet: won't be emailed" and still saves the note, so the household sees it once they sign in. See Message a household, and saved replies.

By default nothing: the invoice has no due date and the family keeps their pending membership until someone acts. To give it a deadline, set Days a new family has to pay their joining invoice in Settings (Club → Membership → Waitlist), from 1 to 365 days. Leave it at 0 for no deadline.

When it is set, the invoice gets a due date that many days after the family accepts, and the welcome email names it. The family is reminded a week before and again two days before; the deadline applies whether or not those reminders go out. If nothing has been paid by the end of the due date, the club cancels the invoice, ends the pending membership, and offers the spot to the next household if Waitlist auto-advance is on. The family and your managers are emailed. Nothing is charged, and nothing paid is ever taken back.

Some invoices are never cancelled automatically: one the family has paid part of, one with a bank payment still on its way, and one where the family is in the middle of paying. For a part-paid invoice, managers get a single email and a task telling them it is past due, and the family keeps their place until someone decides. Collect the rest, give them more time, or cancel the invoice from the household's invoices; cancelling it ends their pending membership at the next hourly check and offers the spot to the next household (unless you have already raised a replacement joining invoice). A family that pays at the last minute is not cancelled: a payment on its way holds the cancellation off until it settles. A bank debit that is returned after the deadline does not extend it.

A household that was released this way is not treated as a former member: their portal home says the joining invoice was cancelled, and members-only pages stay closed to them. They cannot apply again at the join page. Open the household and use Add to waitlist to put them back at the end of the line.

The "How full is the club?" card at the top of the waitlist shows where the club stands against its target size, which is configured in Settings (Club → Membership).

• Renewing or paid is this season's members who are renewing or have paid. Click it to open Renewals.

• Leaving this season is members who have given notice, plus any the board removed for not paying. When the board removed some, the tile says how many, because those households never appear on the Leaving the club page. Click it to open Leaving the club.

• Offers accepted is households that accepted an offer but whose join invoice isn't paid yet, including any that paid by bank transfer that hasn't cleared. Click it to see the club's join invoices; filter by status there to find the ones still open or still clearing.

A tile only opens a page if your role can open that page. Otherwise it is just a number.

How many offers are safe to send is not a tile. It is one sentence in the Send offers to the top of the list card, just above the table: it is how many more offers you can send and still stay at or under the target, even if everyone says yes. It reads "1 offer is safe to send now" or "No offers are safe to send right now" when there are fewer. If no target size is set, the sentence is left out.

Set apart on the right is the share of current members who are residents. The wording comes from the residency label configured in Settings. Its total counts every household on the member list today, including any that have given notice but haven't been approved yet. That's why it can be higher than "Renewing or paid". It doesn't change how many offers are safe to send.

If no target size is set, an admin sees a link to set it. Other staff are asked to have a club admin set it.

A bond is separate from dues and other invoices. Review the household's membership and bond history before approving a refund. Bond refunds go through the check run, not a card or ACH refund. See How to resign a swim club membership.

If your club has no bond, leave the amount at zero. The initiation invoice then carries no bond line, and the bond wording disappears from the public join page, the offer email, the offer acceptance page, and the welcome email. Set the amount before your first offer goes out.