Chasing Unpaid Subs Without Souring the Group: A Process for Clubs and Classes
Fairhaven Table Tennis Club in Stockport has 84 members and charges £6 a month. At its 2025 AGM the treasurer reported £1,410 uncollected across 23 members, and nine of those balances went back more than a year. Nobody had refused to pay. Every one of the 23 had simply stopped being asked, because the person who would have had to ask them saw them every Thursday evening and could not face it.
TL;DR
Unpaid subs in a small group are rarely a refusal to pay, so treating them as a debt problem makes things worse. Publish a four-step ladder in advance, run it on dates rather than on mood, and keep the first two steps automatic and private: a reminder at day three, a named personal message at day ten, a conversation at three weeks, and the consequence you already wrote down at four weeks. Split the roles so the coach or teacher is not the person asking for money. Skip late fees and interest, because they collect almost nothing and cost the relationship permanently, and build a concession route that exists before anyone needs it. In Bitir the roster, the payment status and the reminders sit in the same place, so chasing is a filtered list rather than a memory test.
Why do subs go unpaid in clubs that are otherwise well run?
Three reasons, and only one of them is about money.
The first is that nobody has a reliable list. A club that takes bank transfers with inconsistent references, cash at the door, and a handful of standing orders set up in 2021 does not have a payment record; it has three partial records that have to be reconciled by hand. The Charity Commission's guidance on internal financial controls for charities (CC8) puts income recording first for exactly this reason, and the point applies just as well to an unincorporated club that will never file anything.
The second is that the person best placed to ask is the person least able to. In a group of 40, the coach knows every family. Asking a parent for £24 while their child is putting their shoes on is a genuinely unpleasant thing to do, and most volunteers avoid it once and then avoid it forever.
The third is that no consequence was ever written down. If nothing happens when a sub goes unpaid, the sub is optional, and members work that out faster than committees do.
Notice what is missing from that list. Almost nobody in a community group is trying to get something for nothing. Treasurers we speak to describe the same discovery: "When we finally rang them, eleven of the twenty-three said sorry, I thought that had been coming out by standing order."
What does a working subs process actually contain?
Five things, and a group that has all five rarely has an arrears problem.
- One payment method with an unambiguous reference. Standing order or Direct Debit where you can, with the member's name as the reference. Every extra route doubles the reconciliation work.
- A single record of who has paid for what period. One list, held by the group rather than by a person, showing member, period, amount, status.
- A published ladder. What happens on day three, day ten, day 21 and day 28, written in the joining agreement so it is read before it is needed. Our guide to joining agreements that protect your group culture covers where this sits in the document.
- A named role, not a named person. "The treasurer sends the first two reminders" survives a change of treasurer; "Denise chases people" does not.
- A concession route. Written, approvable by someone specific, and mentioned in the same breath as the ladder.
What to leave out: a spreadsheet with a column of red cells that only the treasurer ever opens. The point of the record is that more than one person can act on it, which is also why it should not live in a personal account. Our guide to member records, contact details and consent makes the same argument about the roster.
What should the chasing ladder look like, and how fast should it move?
Faster than most clubs think, and with less feeling at each step.
Day 3, automatic and private. The same short message to everyone outstanding, sent individually, not signed by a person. Amount, period, how to pay, one line. This step alone clears most of the list, because most of the list is forgetfulness.
Day 10, named and personal. One person writing to one member, asking a question rather than issuing a demand: is now a bad time, would splitting it help? A question gets a reply from people who are avoiding a demand.
Day 21, a conversation. A phone call, or two minutes at the door. Three weeks of silence after two written messages is a signal, and it usually means something the member does not want to put in writing.
Day 28, the consequence you already published. Usually a paused place rather than a removal, with the concession route offered in the same message.
Marguerite Ellis runs a Tuesday street dance class of 31 in Coventry and moved to this ladder in September 2024. Her arrears at the end of the autumn term went from £680 to £95, and only one of those conversations reached day 21. The change she noticed was not the money. It was that she stopped thinking about it on Sunday nights, because the day three and day ten steps no longer required her to decide anything.
Should a club charge late fees or interest?
No, and we would argue that fairly firmly for community groups.
The commercial world has a clear answer here: statutory interest for late payment between businesses is the Bank of England base rate plus 8%, set out in the government's guidance on late commercial payments. That machinery is built for one business withholding cash from another, where the relationship is contractual and both sides have finance functions.
A gymnastics club and a nine-year-old's family are not that. On a £6 monthly sub, a late fee collects pennies, gives the member a reason to argue about the fee instead of paying the sub, and converts a small awkwardness into a formal dispute the club has no capacity to run. It also lands hardest on exactly the families a community group should be trying to keep.
The proportionate consequence is a paused place: clearly stated in advance, applied with notice, and reversed the moment payment arrives. It is honest about what the club is actually withholding, and unlike a penalty it costs nothing to undo. Where a group does charge for a fixed programme rather than an ongoing membership, the pricing decisions behind that sit in our guide to pricing group coaching.
How do you handle a family that cannot pay without everyone knowing?
By building the concession before anyone needs it.
A hardship or concession route that already exists turns a confession into a form. Write three things: who can approve it (one named role, not the whole committee), what it covers (full waiver, half rate, a payment break of a stated length), and when it is reviewed. Then say it out loud once a term, in the same message as the fee reminder, so that asking carries no signal.
Record the agreement where the group can find it, not in the treasurer's memory. The concession most likely to cause an incident is the one agreed at the door in 2023 and known only to a volunteer who has since left, which is a pattern we go into in our guide to handing a group over to a new leader.
And keep it genuinely invisible in the group. If concession members are excluded from a kit order or listed differently on a team sheet, the arrangement is not confidential, whatever the record says.
What changes when the roster and the subs record live in the same place?
Chasing stops being a memory test and becomes a filter.
When membership, attendance and payment status sit in one system that the group owns, the treasurer opens a list of members outstanding for a period and sends the day three reminder to that list in one action. Nobody works out who to write to, and nobody accidentally messages someone who paid in cash last Thursday. In Bitir the member record, the roles that control who can see it, and the private messages that carry a reminder all live in the same group space, so the first two rungs of the ladder are a couple of taps rather than an evening.
The role split matters as much as the automation. Because capabilities in Bitir are granted per role, a club can give a treasurer the ability to see and act on the payment record without giving them access to coaching notes, and let a coach run sessions without ever seeing who is behind on subs. That separation is what actually keeps the coach out of the money conversation, and our guide to roles in a coaching group sets out how the permissions divide.
There is a second effect that shows up at the next AGM. A club with a dated record can say how many members were in arrears at any point in the year and what the ladder recovered. A club with a shoebox can only say what is missing now.
Questions organisers ask
How do you chase unpaid membership subs in a small club?
With a written ladder that runs on dates rather than on how the treasurer feels that week: an automatic private reminder around day three, a named personal message around day ten, an actual conversation around day three weeks, and the consequence set out in the joining agreement at about four weeks. Publishing the ladder in advance is what makes it work, because every member then knows what happens next and nothing arrives as a surprise.
Should a club charge a late fee or interest on unpaid subs?
For a community club or a class, no. Statutory late payment interest of the Bank of England base rate plus 8% exists for commercial debts between businesses, and applying that logic to a family paying six pounds a month collects very little money while permanently changing the relationship. A paused place is a clearer and more proportionate consequence than a penalty, and it is reversible the moment the payment arrives.
Who should send the reminder about unpaid subs?
Not the person who teaches or coaches the member, if the group can avoid it. Split the roles: the first two reminders come from a treasurer or an administrator, and the coach only becomes involved at the conversation stage, and then about the member rather than about the money. Groups with a single volunteer running everything should at least change the channel, sending payment messages by email and keeping the group channel free of them.
Should unpaid subs ever be mentioned in the group chat?
Never as a chase, and never in a way that lets members work out who is behind. A general message that says several people still owe for the autumn term is read by the people who have paid and ignored by the people who have not, and it teaches the group that money talk happens in public. Announcements about deadlines and amounts belong in the group; anything about an individual belongs in a private message.
What do you do when a family genuinely cannot pay?
Have a concession route that exists before anyone needs it, so asking for it is a normal request rather than a confession. Write down who can approve it, what it covers, and how long it lasts, then record the agreement where the next treasurer will find it. The concession that most often causes trouble later is the one agreed verbally at the door and never written anywhere.
Turn chasing into a filtered list
Keep the roster, the payment status and the reminders in one space the group owns, give the treasurer their own role, and send the first two rungs of the ladder without deciding anything.
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