Sports club and team dues
Every amateur team has the same treasurer problem: small amounts, lots of people, every single week.
Short answer. Club dues split into three kinds of money: regular subscriptions, per-occasion match fees, and one-off costs like kit. Tracking them separately is what makes it possible to say whether the club is actually covering its costs.
Three kinds of money
| Type | Rhythm | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Monthly | Pitch hire, league entry, insurance |
| Match fee | Per game | Referee, balls, that day's costs |
| One-off | Occasional | Kit, tournament entry, travel |
Merged into one figure, none of these can be reviewed. Separated, you can see exactly which one is not covering itself.
Knowing whether it works
Most amateur clubs do not know whether their subs cover their fixed costs, because the subs and the costs are never put side by side. Once they are, the answer is usually either "comfortably" or "not since the pitch price went up" — and both are actionable.
Weekly chasing
Match fees are the worst of it: small, frequent and easily forgotten. A visible list of who has paid for which game does nearly all the work, and turns a weekly round of messages into an occasional one.
Common questions
How do we handle occasional players?
Keep match fees separate from subscriptions. Somebody who plays twice a season should pay twice, and the record should show that as normal rather than as a shortfall.
What about a member who is injured?
Excuse the month explicitly rather than leaving it unpaid — a recorded exemption is a decision, an empty row is an accusation.
Read next
- Student society and club funds — Societies, clubs and their yearly handover
- How to collect monthly dues from a group — The monthly routine that stops collection being a chore
- Community fund management, done so people can check it — The general case: money a group collects and spends together