Close a syndicate

Close a syndicate when the group is winding down. Closing is a reversible soft-close, not an immediate deletion: it stops all activity, cancels the Direct Debit mandates at the payment provider and ends the subscription, but keeps your data read-only for a retention window during which you can reinstate it.

Before you start

• You must be an admin of the syndicate.
• Resolve any money in flight first. Closing is refused while a Direct Debit collection is still clearing, or while any member still owes an outstanding balance. Settle these before you close.
• A cash call that is not due yet also blocks the close, even though it sits outside each member’s headline balance. The money is owed either way and closing would strand it. The refusal says how much is owed and across how many members, and where part of it is a cash call, the date it falls due, so you can tell a close that clears itself on a date from one that needs money collecting first.
• Clear any bookings that still need attention. Closing is refused while anyone has a past booking that is confirmed but not yet finalised, or a future booking that already has a usage log against it. Finalise the past flights and sort out the future booking first.
• Once you close, the syndicate becomes read-only and its ledger is frozen. You can reinstate it within the retention window, but reinstating is refused if you already have another open syndicate on the free plan; you would need to make room first.

Close the syndicate

1. Open the syndicate and tap the pencil icon next to its name.
2. Scroll to the Close this syndicate card and tap Close syndicate.
3. The app checks whether the syndicate can be closed. If something is unresolved (an in-flight collection, an unsettled balance, a past booking that still needs finalising, or a future booking with a usage log), it tells you what to fix and stops. For a balance it names the figure, how many members it is spread across, and the date any not-yet-due part falls due.
4. Otherwise a confirmation appears explaining how long your data is kept. Confirm to close.

Desktop

Mobile

On close, Syndik8:

• cancels every member’s Direct Debit mandate at the payment provider, so no live mandate is left behind;
• ends the subscription;
• closes the syndicate’s payment account at the provider, so it is never left running with nobody attached;
• cancels all upcoming bookings;
• keeps the financial ledger, read-only, so balances and history survive.

If the payment account cannot be closed yet, the close is refused and the syndicate stays open. This happens when the account still holds a balance or has a payout in flight; resolve that (or contact provider support) and try the close again. A refusal at this step is not a full rollback: the Direct Debit mandates and the subscription have already been cancelled by the earlier steps, so if you decide not to close after all, members will need to re-sign their mandates. In the rare case where the payment account was closed at the provider but the close still could not finish, simply try again; the retry picks up from where it stopped. A payment account you had already closed from the payment settings does not block the close, and a free syndicate that never connected one has nothing to close here, so this step is skipped.

The retention window

Your data is kept for a period that depends on whether payments were taken:

• If payments were taken (an active mandate, or provider payment activity in the last 18 months), the data is kept until 18 months after the last payment, so any late payment issue (for example a Direct Debit indemnity claim or a card dispute) can still be handled. The confirmation shows the exact period, rounded up to a whole month, and never shorter than 30 days.
• If no payments were taken, the data is kept for a flat 30 days, matching the account-closure window.

Throughout the window the syndicate is read-only and you may be notified of any payment issue that needs attention.

Reinstate a closed syndicate

Within the retention window, any admin can bring the syndicate back:

1. Open the closed syndicate and tap the pencil icon.
2. On the closed banner, tap Reinstate syndicate and confirm.

Desktop

Mobile

The syndicate reopens on the free plan. Because it comes back on the free plan, reinstating is refused if you already have another open syndicate on the free plan; you would need to make room first. Because provider cancellations are final, members must re-sign their Direct Debit mandates and, for paid features, re-subscribe. Bookings that were cancelled at close stay cancelled.

What other members see

Closing does not send members a notification — they find out the next time they open the syndicate. A member’s access to a closed syndicate has two phases:

• For 30 days after closing, every member (not just admins) sees a persistent banner at the top of every tab stating the syndicate is read-only, with the date their own access ends. History, the ledger and past bookings stay visible and readable during this time; anything that would create new activity, such as submitting an expense, is hidden. Any of the member’s own bookings that were still upcoming were cancelled at close.
• After those 30 days, an ordinary member loses the syndicate entirely — it disappears from their syndicate list, and none of its data can be read any more, even directly. This does not affect the underlying retention window: the data itself is still kept and can still be reinstated.

Admins are unaffected by this 30-day cutoff — they keep the full read-only view (with the eventual removal date, not the member access-end date) for the whole retention window, and can reinstate at any point within it.

Only an admin can reinstate a closed syndicate — the option lives behind the pencil icon on the syndicate, which only admins see. A member who wants a closed syndicate back needs to ask an admin to reinstate it within the retention window; reinstating restores every member’s access, including a member who had already been locked out.

After the window

When the retention window elapses, a scheduled job removes the syndicate permanently. Where any financial history exists, an anonymised money trail is kept for accounting and late dispute handling, with personal, bank and provider details stripped. A syndicate that never recorded anything financial is removed entirely.

See also

• Edit syndicate (reference)
• Soft delete (glossary)