Record a payment from a member

Record a payment from a member

Not every payment goes through the app. A member may pay you by bank transfer straight into the syndicate account, or hand over cash. Recording it here clears the charges it covers and puts a dated entry on the member’s payment history, so the ledger matches the bank.

This is the route to use when your syndicate has not connected a payment account yet. It needs no payment provider, no card, and no Direct Debit mandate.

Before you start

• You must be an admin (a treasurer needs the admin role).
• You must be online. Recording a payment writes to the financial ledger.
• Know the amount the member actually paid. You record the charges the payment covers, and Syndik8 checks the total against them.
• If the member holds a credit, recording a payment does not use it. The payment covers their charges; the credit stays theirs. See credits on the account below.
• Paying a cash call before it is due? A member’s share of a cash call is not among their charges until its due date. Open the cash call, tap Put on their balance now on that member’s share and confirm; it then appears among their outstanding charges and you record the payment against it as below.

Steps

1. Open the syndicate and go to Members.
2. Tap the member’s row to open their drilldown. Route: /syndicates/:syndicateId/members/:membershipId.
3. Under Balance you see what the member owes, or that they are settled up.
4. Tap Record a payment. Their outstanding charges open. Route: /syndicates/:syndicateId/members/:membershipId/charges.
5. Choose what the payment covers:
   • To record a payment covering everything outstanding, tap Record payment of £X at the top. That figure is what is left on the member’s charges. Any credit they hold is not taken off it.
   • To record a payment covering a single charge, tap Record payment on that charge’s row. A single row is recorded gross, at its own amount.
6. Tap Record in the Record payment? dialog. It names the member and the amount, so check both before confirming. The dialog stays open, with a spinner on Record, until Syndik8 has answered.
7. The dialog closes and you see Payment recorded. The charges disappear from the outstanding list, the member’s balance drops by the amount, and the payment appears on their payment history as an External payment.

What gets recorded

Each recorded payment writes one settlement carrying two names:

• the member whose charges it clears, and
• the admin who recorded it.

Both are kept, so it is always clear who logged the payment and on whose behalf. Nothing else about the member’s finances changes.

Credits on the account

A member can hold a credit: money the syndicate owes them, for example an expense paid back, a loan they made to the syndicate, or a charge corrected downwards after they had paid it. A credit sits on the ledger as a negative row.

Recording a payment never uses a credit. Money the member handed over pays their charges. A member with £200 of charges and a £30 credit is asked for £200, and recording it settles the charges and leaves the £30 credit on their account. Credit is used only when someone chooses to use it.

The credit is listed with the charges, marked Credit (or Loan, for money the member lent the syndicate). The total at the top counts the charges only, and when the member has credit they can use, a line under it says so, for example Sarah Jones has £30.00 credit they can use. A credit line that has already been partly used counts only for what is left on it; the row shows what is left, with the figure it started at under it, for example Part used, from £50.00.

A credit carries no Record payment button of its own. There is no money to receive against it. It carries Mark as paid out instead, for recording that the syndicate paid it back to the member outside the app. To pay the member’s charges from their credit, use Use £X of credit. Both are covered in Use or pay out a member’s credit.

When the member has only credit

If the member has credit but no charges to record, Record payment of £X is replaced by No charges to collect. The total reads £0.00 and the credit is still listed, with the line naming how much they can use.

This is not a refund. Sending money back to a member goes through Refund or correct a payment, or, for credit you have already paid back by bank transfer or in cash, Mark as paid out.

Credits another payment has already reserved

A credit already reserved by a payment in flight carries the same label as a charge in that state, and is not counted in the credit the line under the total names: that payment is already using it.

Charges another payment has already reserved

Starting any payment reserves the charges it covers, and a reserved charge is listed with a label and left out of the payment you record. The header total and the Record payment of £X button show only what is left. This is deliberate, and it is enforced by the ledger rather than by the screen: recording a payment against a charge something else is already collecting would take the same money twice, and the attempt is refused outright.

Which label it carries tells you what to do about it.

Collection in progress means something is already collecting it that the member cannot finish themselves — most often a Direct Debit, but equally a card payment that has gone past the point where retrying is theirs to do. Nothing is needed from you: it clears on its own when the collection completes, and if the collection fails the charge comes back into the settleable list.

Card payment not finished means the member started a card payment and it was never confirmed. Online payment not finished is the same thing for a payment started on the online payment page, which offers methods other than a card; Syndik8 is not told which one the member chose. This one does not reliably clear by itself. The member still has a Pay button on their own balance screen, and finishing that payment is what frees the charge. If they have handed you cash instead, ask them to open My Balance and complete or abandon the payment — once it resolves, reopen their charges and the row will be recordable.

The note under the total that explains why these charges are left out follows the same rule: it says card payment only when every such payment is a card payment, and online payment otherwise.

A charge whose card payment has been handed to the bank to clear shows Collection in progress rather than this, because there is nothing for the member to finish.

Recording a payment for yourself

If you are an admin and the charges are your own, use My Balance instead. Each of your own outstanding charges has a Mark Paid link there, on the line under the charge after its Pay button. The ordinary payment options stay on the row. The Balance section on your own member drilldown offers Add ledger entry (for a charge, a credit or a loan on your own balance) rather than Record a payment. Marking your own charges paid tells every other admin of the syndicate, with an Admin Changed Own Balance notification naming you and the amount; you are not sent a copy, and if you are the only admin nobody is. The Mark as Paid Externally? confirmation behaves like Record payment?: it stays open until Syndik8 answers, and if it fails it says so in the same words as below, naming the charge rather than the payment.

Offline behaviour

Recording a payment is deliberately online-only. It writes to the ledger, and money conflicts are not something the app will resolve for you later. Attempting it without a connection fails and nothing is written. The dialog stays open and says Couldn’t reach Syndik8, so the payment wasn’t recorded. Try again when you’re back online. A dialog that closes means the payment was recorded.

If it goes wrong

• “Couldn’t reach Syndik8, so the payment wasn’t recorded.” The device has no connection to Syndik8. Nothing was written; try again when you are back online.
• “Syndik8 didn’t confirm the payment, so it may or may not have been recorded.” No answer arrived within about 20 seconds, or the connection dropped after the request had gone out, so the app cannot tell whether the payment was recorded. Reopen the member’s charges before trying again: if they are still listed, record the payment again. Doing so is safe, because charges that are already settled are refused rather than settled twice.
• “Syndik8 turned this down, so the payment wasn’t recorded.” Something changed since the list loaded, most often a payment claiming a charge (a Direct Debit collection, or the member starting one of their own) or another admin recording the same payment. It is also what you see if you are not an admin of this syndicate. Reopen the member’s charges to see the current position.
• “Only a syndicate admin can record a payment for another member.”: the same thing, seen when the charges screen is opened directly.
• “Couldn’t record the payment: This syndicate is closed and read-only.” The syndicate has been closed, and a closed syndicate’s ledger is frozen for everyone, admins included. Nothing was recorded. A syndicate cannot be closed while anyone still owes a balance, so a payment arriving after closure is unusual: check it is not a duplicate of one already settled before the close. If the money genuinely needs to land, reinstate the syndicate inside its retention window, record the payment, then close it again. See close a syndicate.
• The syndicate is over the free plan and read-only. Recording a payment still works. That is deliberate: settling a member up is one of the steps a syndicate needs in order to trim back within the plan, so this state allows it even though it refuses new charges. See bring a syndicate within the free plan.
• You recorded a payment that never arrived. Undo it from Admin → Refunds & chargebacks: choose the payment, keep Reverse the settlement, and confirm. No money is sent anywhere — there was none at the payment provider to send — and the charges go back to being owed. The member gets a Payment corrected notice saying their balance has gone up by that amount and that no money has moved, so tell them before they read it if the mistake was yours. See Refund or correct a payment.

See also

• Member balance: how a member’s running balance is computed
• Payment history: where the recorded payment appears
• Refund or correct a payment: undoing a payment recorded in error
• Use or pay out a member’s credit: paying a member’s charges from their credit, or recording credit paid back to them
• Pay your balance: the member-facing route when a payment account is connected
• Grace period and read-only: which read-only situations still allow a payment to be recorded