Cash calls

What it is

A cash call asks every equity member for their proportional share of a one-off cost (an engine overhaul, a hangar deposit, an avionics upgrade) in a single step. The admin enters a title, an optional description, the total amount, and either a due date or Due now; Syndik8 splits the total across the syndicate’s active equity members in proportion to their shares and records each member’s share of the call.

A cash call is a notice until it falls due. Issuing it puts nothing on anybody’s balance. Each member’s share goes onto their balance as a Cash call charge ledger entry on the due date, or earlier if they choose to pay it early. From then on it is an ordinary charge: it is in the balance figure, in Pay All, collected by Direct Debit and chased like any other.

For the step-by-step admin flow, see Issue a cash call. This page covers the concepts and rules.

Who can use it

Admin (a treasurer needs the admin role): issues and cancels cash calls, corrects their due dates, and sees every member’s share and its state on the call’s detail screen.
Equity member (shares greater than zero): receives a share, sees the syndicate’s cash calls, and sees their own share. Members without equity (renters) and former members are never given one.

Where to find it

Admins: syndicate Admin tab, then Cash calls (under Actions). The list shows every call, newest due first, with a status chip; tapping a call opens its detail screen.
Members: the Cash calls not due yet card on the member balance screen lists each of your shares whose due date has not arrived, with its due date, its amount and its own Pay button, and taps through to the call’s detail. It works offline. The same amount is named on a Not due yet line under the balance, but it is not part of the balance. On the due date the share leaves the card and becomes an ordinary row in the balance ledger below; once it is paid it appears in Settled.

On the detail screen, the Members’ shares section shows one row per member with the state of their share:

State	Meaning
Not due yet	Waiting for the due date. Nothing is on the member’s balance.
Paid early	The member paid before the due date.
Awaiting payment	On the member’s balance and not yet paid.
Paid	Paid on or after the due date.
Cancelled	Not owed: the call was cancelled, or the member left or was removed before the due date. The row says who cancelled it (where a person did), when, and why.

Paid and Paid early show a tick, and the tick and the state are in green, as a payment that arrived is everywhere else in the app.

Admins see every member’s row; a member sees their own.

Concepts

The split

The total is divided in the smallest unit of the syndicate’s currency (pence, for a syndicate billing in sterling), weighted by shares, at the moment the call is issued:

A call must be worth at least a penny to every share, so a syndicate with 1,000 shares between its members cannot raise a call below £10.00. This is arithmetic rather than policy: the split works in whole pence, so a smaller call would give somebody a charge of nothing, and a charge of nothing is neither owed nor paid — no payment method will take it and nothing can clear it, so it would sit on that member’s balance for ever. The screen tells you the minimum for your syndicate before you submit.
Only active equity members (membership status active, shares greater than zero) are included.
Each member is first allocated their exact share rounded down to a whole unit.
Any leftover units are then handed out one each to the members whose exact shares had the largest fraction rounded away (ties are broken by higher share count, then the issuing admin, then a fixed member order). No member absorbs more than a single extra unit, and the parts always sum exactly to the total.

For example, a £1,000 call across three members holding 3, 2, and 1 shares works out at £500.00, £333.33, and £166.67. The spare penny goes to the one-share member, because their exact share (£166.666…) had the most rounded away; it does not automatically go to the largest shareholder.

The live preview on the create screen runs the same rule as the server, so the preview the admin reads is exactly what gets charged.

Snapshot at issue

The split is frozen when the call is issued. Later changes to the membership roster or to anyone’s share count never reshuffle the shares of an existing call. A member who leaves, or is removed, after their share has gone onto their balance still owes it; before then, their share is cancelled as they go (see below), and nobody else’s share grows to cover it. The cash call’s own page then shows Now collecting under its Total: what the shares not cancelled add up to.

States

A cash call’s state is derived from its members’ shares each time it is read:

State	Meaning
Pending	No share has been paid yet.
Partial	At least one member has paid, but not all.
Complete	Every share that is not cancelled has been paid.
Cancelled	An admin cancelled the call before any payment landed.

A call past its due date with nothing paid is still Pending; being overdue drives reminders (below), not a separate state.

If a call’s state cannot be loaded, usually because the device has no connection, the list shows a Retry control in place of the status chip, and the detail screen says “Status is unavailable. Retry when you have a connection.” with a Retry button beneath. A cancelled call always shows Cancelled.

Every share of a call is worth at least a penny, because a call too small to manage that is refused when it is issued. So a call reaches Complete once every member has paid, with no share to discount.

Due dates and reminders

Every call has a due date. Choose a date, or switch on Due now. Due now makes the call due today in the syndicate’s own day and puts every member’s share on their balance straight away. A date of today works the same way. A later date leaves each share waiting until that day.

Which day. A syndicate’s day is the one in the owner’s timezone (London when the owner has not set one), the same day the syndicate’s dues and Direct Debit collections run on. Shares are put on members’ balances within an hour of that day beginning.

It can be corrected. An admin can move an issued call to a different date from the call’s detail screen; see Correct a cash call’s due date. The correction moves every share still waiting to the new date. A share already on a member’s balance, because it fell due or because the member paid early, stays exactly as it is. Moving the date to today or earlier puts the waiting shares on members’ balances at once. Once no share is waiting, there is no date left to move, and the control is no longer shown.

Five notifications are involved, carried on three types:

Cash call issued: sent immediately to each member when the call is issued, stating their share and when it is due. The admin who issued the call is not sent it: they already know, having just done it. They still have a share, it still reaches their balance on the due date, and they are still chased by the reminders below. It is sent under the Cash calls type, which follows the member’s notification preferences.
Cash call due date changed: sent under the same Cash calls type, and therefore silenced with it, when an admin corrects an issued call’s date. It names both days, so it cannot be read as a second demand, and no amount is restated. It goes to every member whose share is still waiting, apart from the admin who made the change. A member whose share is already on their balance, paid or not, is not told, because their share has not moved. Re-saving the same date sends nothing.
Cash call cancelled: sent under the same Cash calls type when an admin cancels the call, to every current member who still owed a share: one waiting for its due date, or one on their balance and unpaid. Someone who has left the syndicate is not told. It names the call, the member’s share and its due date, for example “The Engine fund cash call (£100.00, due 24 Oct) has been cancelled.” The admin who cancelled it is not told, and neither is a member whose share had already been cancelled.
Cash call due soon: sent daily at 09:00 (server time) to each member with a share still to pay, starting three days before the due date and continuing up to and including the due date itself. One reminder per member per call per day.
Cash call overdue: sent daily at 09:00 to each member whose share is on their balance and still unpaid once the due date has passed, and repeats every day until it is paid or the call is cancelled.

Nothing extra is sent on the due date itself, when the share goes onto the member’s balance: due soon has already said the date, and overdue follows if it is not paid.

Due soon and overdue are deadline-bearing and sit in the always-on email tier: their emails cannot be switched off and they bypass digest mode, though push for them remains a preference. See Notification types. Members who have already paid stop receiving reminders.

Paying early

A member can pay their share at any time before the due date, from the Pay button on the Cash calls not due yet card. Paying early puts the share on their balance at that moment, as an ordinary cash call charge, and pays it through the usual payment route: the card sheet in the app, or hosted checkout on the web. Paying early needs a connection. The share is put on the balance only once: when the due date arrives, a share already paid early is not added again, and tapping Pay twice pays the same charge.

A payment the member starts and does not finish puts the share back until its due date. Closing the card sheet without paying, leaving the checkout page through its cancel link, the checkout page expiring, the payment provider cancelling the payment, a Direct Debit collecting it early being returned, or the payment being returned by the bank all do this: the payment is stopped with the payment provider first, then the charge that paying early created is cancelled (it stays on the ledger, struck through, with the reason) and the share goes back to the Cash calls not due yet card, to be posted on its due date or paid early again. A declined card does not do it by itself, because the member can try another card in the same sheet; closing the sheet afterwards does, once the payment provider has confirmed the payment is cancelled. The notice about a returned payment or a failed Direct Debit says the cash call is back to waiting for its due date rather than that it is owed again.

If a share paid early is still on the balance and unpaid (the app was closed mid-payment, say), it is listed in a Cash calls on your balance early card with a Not now button, which puts it back in the same way. Nothing is put back once the charge has been paid, while a payment for it is still going through, or once its due date has arrived; the member is told which. A share an admin put on the balance to record a payment is not affected, and only the member can put their own share back: an admin cannot do it for them.

If a payment the member abandoned turns out to have been taken after all, the money is not applied to anything: it does not appear in any balance, the cancelled charge stays cancelled, and Syndik8’s platform administrators are sent an alert to reconcile the money by hand. The syndicate’s admins are not told automatically.

An admin recording a payment a member made another way (a bank transfer, say) before the due date opens the call’s detail screen and taps Put on their balance now on that member’s share. The share becomes due today, and the admin then records the payment against it as they would against any charge.

Settlement tracking

Once a share is on a member’s balance it is settled the same way as any other unpaid charge: an in-app payment, a Direct Debit collection, or an admin recording an externally received payment. As each member’s share is paid, its state on the detail screen changes and the call’s state chip moves from Pending through Partial to Complete. A Direct Debit only ever collects shares that are on the balance: a share waiting for its due date is never collected early.

Behaviour rules

Issuing is admin-only and online-only. The server rejects non-admin callers, and the Issue cash call button disables while the device is offline.
A call needs someone to ask. Issuing fails if the syndicate has no active equity members.
Two admins cannot double-charge. Concurrent issuances against the same syndicate are serialised on the server; the second admin’s call goes through as a separate, new call, never as duplicate shares on the first.
A share is put on the balance once. On its due date, when the member pays it early, or when an admin puts it on the balance: whichever happens first. The others then find it already there.
The due date can be corrected in place, by an admin. The correction is refused on a cancelled call, in a closed syndicate, and when no share is still waiting for its date. A syndicate that is read-only because it is over its free plan can still correct a date, because correcting one creates no new liability. Amounts, the split, and who has a share are untouched.
Cancellation is only possible while wholly unpaid. If any share has been paid, or a payment or Direct Debit collection is holding one, the server refuses to cancel. A share paid early counts: once a member has paid, the call can no longer be cancelled as a whole. Once a share has been paid the detail screen replaces the Cancel cash call button with an explanation; while a collection is merely in flight the button is still shown and the refusal comes back after you confirm.

Tapping Cancel cash call asks Cancel this cash call? and asks for a Reason for cancelling, which every member the call asked will see. The dialog’s Cancel cash call stays unavailable until a reason is typed, and the server refuses a cancellation without one; Go back backs out. While submitting, the dialog stays open with your reason and cannot be dismissed or submitted again. A refusal appears in the dialog. Success returns automatically to the cash-call list.

If no answer arrives, Check status checks without sending another cancellation; a missing response does not prove failure. If cancellation is confirmed by a status check, check the reason recorded on members’ charges, since your reason may not have been recorded. A cancellation already recorded on your device remains Cancelled without a connection; other unavailable statuses offer Retry.

If another admin cancels the call first, your cancellation is refused with a message saying the call is already cancelled, and the reason the first admin gave is the one members see. Backing out individual charges after payment is a job for reversals or manual adjustments.
Cancelling keeps the record. Cancelling stamps the call and every share as cancelled rather than deleting them, recording the admin who cancelled it, when, and the reason given. A share that was waiting for its due date never reached anybody’s balance, so there is nothing to take off it. A share already on a member’s balance is cancelled there too: the charge stays in their balance history reading Cancelled by the admin on the day, followed by the reason, and drops out of the balance.
A departing member’s share of a call not yet due is cancelled. When a member leaves or is removed before a call’s due date, their waiting share is cancelled, with the reason “No longer a member”, naming the admin who removed them where there was one. Nothing of it was on their balance, so it never stops them leaving or being removed; the leave and removal confirmations list it so nobody is surprised. Only that member’s share is cancelled. The call stays live for everybody else, nobody else’s share changes, and the syndicate collects less than it called; an admin can issue another call for the rest. A share already on their balance is different: it is money owed now, and it stops the member leaving or being removed until it is paid. The same happens however a membership ends, including when an account is deleted.
Closing a syndicate cancels shares still waiting. A closed syndicate’s ledger is frozen, so a share waiting for its due date could never reach anybody’s balance. It is cancelled with the reason “Syndicate closed”. Shares already on members’ balances are money owed, and hold the closure like any other balance.
A charge can only be cancelled in these ways. An admin cannot void, delete, reprice or reassign a cash call charge directly, change its type or the cash call it belongs to, or change who is recorded as having cancelled one; the server accepts none of those changes, and a charge’s description cannot be edited either. Correcting a charge that should stand is a job for reversals or manual adjustments.
Cash calls use the syndicate’s currency. The total and every share are in the syndicate’s configured billing currency (set on the Payment account screen); the amount field and the live split preview show that currency’s symbol. There is no separate currency picker on the cash-call form.
The total always adds up. The split is computed in the smallest currency unit, so the shares always sum to the entered total exactly, with nothing lost to rounding.
Nothing on the ledger waits for a date. A charge on a member’s balance is always due from the moment it is there. A cash call not yet due is a share, not a charge, so the balance figure, Pay All, Direct Debit, statements and the exit checks all read the ledger as it stands, with no exception for cash calls.