To collect membership dues online, pick one of three setups: a payment link, recurring invoices, or membership plans on your website that charge on a schedule. Then decide three rules before you switch anything on: whether people are approved before or after they pay, what a member loses when dues lapse, and who owns the payment account when officers change.
The tool matters less than those rules. A club with a clear dues policy can run well on a simple payment link. A club without one will have the same arguments on a fancy platform, only with more screens.
Three ways to take dues online
1. A payment link
Most payment providers let you create a link to a hosted payment page and send it by email or text. Stripe’s Payment Links can sell a one-time payment or a subscription, and anyone with the link can pay.
That last part is the catch. The link has no idea who your members are. Someone pays, and the treasurer still has to find that name on the roster and mark it paid. For a club with a few dozen members and one dues date a year, that’s fine.
2. Recurring invoices
An invoice goes to one named person or organization, which suits groups where members are companies, or where amounts differ from member to member. Wix Invoices can repeat weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or yearly, and it needs a payment provider that supports recurring payments, such as Stripe, PayPal or Wix Payments. Stripe compares its invoices and payment links and offers recurring invoices through its billing tools as well.
Invoices keep a clear paper trail per member. They still sit apart from the website, so access to members-only pages has to be handled by hand.
3. Membership plans on your website
This is the fullest option. A member signs in, picks a plan, pays, and the site knows that this account is paid through a certain date. In Wix Pricing Plans, a recurring plan can renew weekly, monthly or yearly, and you set how long it lasts: a fixed length, such as monthly for one year, or until the member cancels.
Because payment and login live in one place, the site can open or close members-only pages on its own. That is the setup our membership websites are built around.
| Payment link | Recurring invoices | Plans on your site | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup time | Minutes | An hour or two | A website project |
| Knows who paid | No, you match by hand | Yes, per invoice | Yes, per member account |
| Controls site access | No | No | Yes |
| Best for | Small clubs, one dues date | Varied amounts, company members | Groups with members-only content |
Approve members before or after they pay
Decide the order first, because it shapes the sign-up form.
Approve, then pay. The applicant fills in a form, an officer checks they qualify, and only then do they get a way to pay. This suits groups with rules about who can join, such as students, licensed professionals or residents of one area. In Wix, the Signup and Login Security settings let you choose under “Who can be a site member?” whether everyone can join or only people you approve manually.
Pay, then approve. Faster for the applicant, but if you turn someone down you owe them a refund. In Wix Pricing Plans, canceling a plan does not refund it; the refund goes through your payment provider. Fine when nearly everyone qualifies. Messy when many don’t.
We cover the approval queue itself in our guide to member roles and approvals.
Tie member roles to paid status
Once payment and login are in the same system, paid status can drive access. A member with an active plan gets the member role. When the plan ends, the account stays, but the role drops back.
Write down what a lapsed member loses. A typical list:
- Members-only pages and files
- Their listing in the member directory
- Voting or event discounts, if your bylaws tie them to dues
- Posting rights, if members can submit content
And what they keep: their account, their past contributions, and a clear way to renew. Don’t delete lapsed accounts. A member who renews three months late should pick up where they left off.
Keep one member list as the master copy. If dues come in by card online, by check at meetings and by cash at the picnic, all three get entered in the same place, with the same “paid through” date.
Renewals and reminders
There are two common renewal patterns:
- Anniversary renewals. Each member renews a year (or a month) after they joined. Recurring plans handle this well, because the schedule starts at sign-up.
- One season for everyone. All dues are due on, say, September 1. Invoices or a one-time payment with a fixed end date fit this better than a plan that renews on each member’s own date.
Pick one and say it on the join page. Then set reminders: one a few weeks before renewal, one a few days before, and one when dues lapse. Automatic reminders mean the treasurer isn’t the person nagging friends. A simple alert to the officers when someone joins, renews or cancels helps too; our website automations send those by email or Discord.
When a payment fails
Cards expire and get replaced. Plan for it.
In Wix Pricing Plans, a failed renewal automatically cancels the member’s plan, and the member has to buy the plan again. You can soften that with a grace period, set in Subscription settings. It can last up to 14 days, and with retries turned on, Wix tries the card again every 24 hours during that window. Wix says retries are still rolling out, so check that your account has them. Stripe offers retries and reminder emails for subscription payment links too, through its revenue recovery tools.
Whatever your tool does, write the club’s rule in plain words: “If a payment fails, you keep access for 14 days while we retry your card. After that, your membership pauses until you renew.”
Records the treasurer needs
Online payments make bookkeeping easier only if someone keeps the records together. At minimum:
- The member list with each person’s paid-through date and how they paid
- A monthly export of transactions from the payment provider
- Payouts matched to bank deposits. Providers send money in batches with fees taken out, so the deposit rarely equals the dues collected
- Refunds and waived dues, each with a short reason and who approved it
- Cash and checks entered in the same list as card payments
If your organization is tax-exempt or files its own returns, ask your accountant which records they want and for how long. We can’t give tax advice, and the answer depends on your group.
Handing it over when officers change
This is where most clubs get stuck. The old treasurer graduates or moves, and the payment account, the website login and the member list all lived under their personal email.
Set it up so the handover takes an hour:
- Open the payment account in the organization’s name, connected to the organization’s bank account, not an officer’s.
- Sign in with a shared officer email (treasurer@yourclub.org) that passes from one officer to the next.
- Give each officer their own login and role on the website. Wix lets an owner invite people to contribute with set permissions, so nobody shares a password.
- Keep a one-page dues policy: amounts, renewal date, grace period, refund rule, what lapsed members lose.
- At handover, the outgoing treasurer walks the new one through a month of records, then their personal access is removed.
Get step 1 right early. Wix notes that if you switch payment providers, you first cancel all active recurring plans and ask members to buy again. Moving a club’s dues to a new account later is a project, not a setting.
How we can help
If your dues still run through a spreadsheet and a personal payment app, start with the one-page policy above. That alone fixes a lot. When you’re ready for plans, member logins and access that turns on and off with payment, our membership websites page shows how we set that up, and our clubs and organizations page covers member databases with roles and approvals. Send us your membership levels and how people pay today through our contact page, and we’ll tell you which of the three setups fits.