Member balance

What it is

Your member balance is what you owe the syndicate right now. It is the signed sum of every unpaid transaction on your ledger: usage charges, event charges, shortfalls, periodic dues, cash-call charges, expense credits, loans you made to the syndicate, recorded payments, manual adjustments, and reversals.

One thing is deliberately left out. A cash call whose due date has not arrived is money you have been told about but are not yet being asked for, so it sits outside the balance and is shown on its own as Not due yet. On its due date it joins the balance and becomes an ordinary charge. Everything else counts from the moment it is posted.

A positive balance means you owe the syndicate money. A negative balance means the syndicate owes you.

Each syndicate you are a member of has its own balance. Balances on the home shell shows all of them in one place.

Who can use it

Member: reads their own balance.
Admin (treasurer counts as admin): reads every member’s balance; records manual payments, adjustments, and reversals.

Where to find it

Member balance (one syndicate): /syndicates/:syndicateId/balance.
Balances (all syndicates): tab on the home shell.

Fields / options

The balance screen shows:

Element	What it shows
Balance	Current balance in the syndicate’s currency, with a line under it saying what it counts: everything you owe now, less credits. Debits positive, credits negative.
Pending	Estimated amount attributable to your bookings whose window has already ended and which nobody has finalised yet. Maintenance bookings are left out, because they are never charged to anybody. Informational only; does not affect the stored balance, and it disappears from here as each booking is finalised and its real charges post.
Not due yet	Total of the cash calls you have been told about whose due date has not arrived. Sits outside the balance figure, like Pending, and is itemised in the Cash calls not due yet card.
Balance trend / sparkline	An arrow comparing this month’s charges against last month’s, above a small chart of your closing balance over recent months. Both are cut into the same months as the headings below them.
Outstanding	Everything you still owe, newest first, grouped by month. These rows add up to the balance above them.
Settled	Everything already paid or collected, below a divider. These do not change your balance, and older months arrive a page at a time behind Show earlier.

A row that came from a cash call carries a chevron and opens to show what the call was for; the other rows do not open and do not show one, so a row that leads somewhere no longer looks like a row that does not. The sentence marking a charge as already scheduled for collection is plain status text and no longer wears the colour the app uses for links.

Both halves are one list, so nothing appears in both and every row that moves the balance is in the Outstanding half — a credit included. A month heading carries that month’s signed net, so a month you ended in credit shows a negative figure rather than a positive one in a different colour.

Which month a row is filed under is worked out in the timezone on your profile, the same timezone a posted date on a row is shown in — so a charge posted late on the last night of a month sits under that month’s heading, not the next one. The trend arrow and the sparkline above use those same months, so the chart, the arrow and the headings can never disagree about which month a late-night charge belongs to. An exported statement uses the same timezone throughout, so the screen and the export always agree. See Statement format.

A row dated by a flight is the exception, because a flight date is not a moment in time at all: it is the plain calendar day recorded against the flight, so it reads the same wherever you are and does not follow your profile timezone anywhere. Only a charge that came from a logged session carries one — the flying time and each event fee. Everything else leads with the date it was posted, a minimum shortfall, a periodic dues charge and an admin’s adjustment included.

So a row’s own date and the heading above it need not name the same month, and that is not a fault. The heading is always the month the charge was posted, because that is the month it moved your balance and the month whose subtotal has to add up. A flight flown on 3 July and finalised on 20 August therefore reads “3 Jul 2026” under an “August 2026” heading. For a flight logged in the month it was flown — nearly all of them — the two match and there is nothing to notice.

One flight, one row

Billing produces a separate ledger entry for the usage and for each event fee, because they are corrected and rated independently. The balance screen shows them as one line: the route and date if the session recorded them, otherwise a plain title, with a single total. The hours and the hourly rate stay on the collapsed row, so you can check the rate without opening anything, and Show how this was worked out reveals each underlying charge.

Grouping is presentation only. The individual charges are unchanged in the ledger, and they still appear one by one on your statement.

Paying while you are in credit

Pay All collects the net of the Outstanding rows, so it is offered only when that net is an amount you owe. Hold a credit that cancels your charges out, or more than cancels them, and there is no net to collect and no Pay All button.

Each charge underneath keeps its own Pay button regardless. That is deliberate: paying a charge by card is how you keep a credit intact and shrink a later Direct Debit instead of letting the credit absorb the charge. Nothing is lost either way, because a credit is set against your charges when they are collected.

The difference between the two routes is that a single row is charged gross, while Pay All and a Direct Debit both take the net. So paying one charge on its own can leave you further in credit than you started, which may be exactly what you want and may not be.

When that is what a payment would do, Syndik8 says so before taking anything. Tapping Pay on a row that would leave you in credit overall opens a short confirmation naming both figures: where your balance stands now, and where paying this row on its own leaves it. Where Pay All is on screen, the confirmation names it as the alternative that puts the credit towards the charges instead. Where it is not — because the net is not an amount that can be collected — the confirmation states the outcome and stops there.

You can always go ahead. The confirming action is Pay and keep my credit, and Cancel takes you back to the ledger with nothing charged. Paying a charge that settles your balance exactly, or leaves some of it still owed, is not confirmed at all.

The screen says there is nothing to pay only when there genuinely is nothing: when every unsettled row you hold is a credit and nothing is waiting in the Cash calls not due yet card.

Cash calls you are not being asked for yet

A cash call carries a due date, and until that date arrives it is not part of your balance. It is not in the figure at the top, it is not an Outstanding row, and Pay All does not collect it. This matches what a Direct Debit does: a collection never draws a cash call before its due date, so the balance, the button and the bank all mean the same thing by “owed”.

Instead it sits in its own Cash calls not due yet card above the ledger, showing what the call is for, when it falls due, and what your share is. Beneath the balance figure, a Not due yet line totals them, in the same way the Pending line totals flying that has not been finalised, so you can see the money coming without it being counted as owed.

A due date can move. An admin can correct an issued call’s date without cancelling it, and everyone with something still to pay on that call is told (a share paid in full is not, and neither is a cancelled charge), with both the new day and the day it moved from named. From then on the card, the reminders and any Direct Debit collection all use the corrected date. See Cash calls.

You can still pay one early: each row in the card has its own Pay button. Paying early does not put you into credit, because the charge was never in the balance to begin with. A cash call you pay early leaves the card straight away and appears in Settled with everything else — from that point the due date stops mattering and it is an ordinary paid transaction.

Because the money sits outside the balance, a member with nothing payable today but a cash call still waiting would otherwise be told everything was settled. The two places that headline a balance say Nothing due now instead, with the waiting amount named beneath on a Not due yet line: the Balances tab on the home shell, and the balance card on a syndicate’s Dashboard. All settled is kept for when there is genuinely nothing owed and nothing on its way. Neither headline adds the waiting money to the balance; only the wording changed.

When the due date arrives, the call becomes completely ordinary: it joins the balance figure, appears as an Outstanding row with the usual Pay button, drops out of the card, and is collectable by Direct Debit. Nothing about it is special after that.

Behaviour rules

The balance is computed from the ledger on read. It is not a separately stored number. This is why a reversal is visible the moment it is posted: there is no cache to invalidate.
Debits (you owe): usage charges, event charges, minimum shortfall, periodic dues, and positive manual adjustments.
Credits (you are owed or you have paid): expense credits, recorded payments, loans you made to the syndicate, corrections that leave money owed to you on account, and negative manual adjustments. A refund paid back to your bank posts a credit for the difference and pays that credit off in the same moment, as the money leaves — so the ledger records what you were charged without your balance moving. A loan is repaid by flying against the credit; Syndik8 records no cash repayment.
The pending figure counts charges that will land once an admin finalises the relevant bookings. It is made up of the indicative, server-computed charge shown for each flight when it was logged, itemised per unfinalised log. Those amounts can still change at finalisation (for example if an admin waives a shortfall or corrects a meter reading). It does not include recurring dues that are due in future periods.
A negative balance is a real position: the syndicate owes you money. You carry that forward against future charges; Syndik8 has no way to record the syndicate paying the money back out to you.
Your balance is visible to admins for oversight and treasurer purposes. It is not visible to other members.
All amounts are in the syndicate’s currency. Syndik8 does not add VAT to syndicate charges.
If your balance falls due and you are not on a Direct Debit mandate, Syndik8 sends you a “Balance now due” notice (in-app, push, and email) and repeats it weekly until you have settled. Members on a Direct Debit mandate are not chased this way; their balance is collected automatically. A charge your bank is still looking into is left out of the chasing, because no route would let you settle it. See Notification types.
A charge held while your bank decides a dispute counts in your balance and in the Outstanding list, and counts out of Pay All, every Direct Debit collection and the billing close. You still owe it; nothing may take it until your bank rules.

If your member rate carries periodic dues, a banner above the Outstanding list says what happens next with them. It describes a charge, not a collection: on the dues date the amount is added to what you owe, and how the balance is then collected — by card, by Direct Debit, or by hand — is a separate matter on its own schedule.

There are three shapes, and which one you see depends entirely on the scheme’s Next collection date:

A date ahead: “£150.00 dues will be added to your balance on 4 October 2026”.
A date already passed: the same sentence in the past tense, in amber. The hourly dues job has not yet posted the charge — normally a matter of hours, because it posts at 09:00 in the syndicate owner’s timezone.
No date at all: “£150.00 dues every month — not currently scheduled”, in neutral grey. Dues are paused: nothing will post until an admin sets a collection date on the scheme. The amount is still shown, so that a member who was told at signup they would pay monthly can see the figure, but no date is invented and nothing is marked overdue. An admin sees the same thing from the other side — the scheme’s Next collection field reads Not scheduled, and the members list shows no overdue chip.

When a payment is already under way

Starting any payment reserves the charges it covers, so that nothing else can collect them at the same time. The screen tells you what is holding them, because what you should do about it depends entirely on which of two things is happening.

A Direct Debit is collecting

The bank is taking the money and you need do nothing.

A banner appears below the balance header naming the total amount being collected and saying it will leave your account over the next few working days. It does not name a day, and Syndik8 has no way to know one: the payment provider chooses when a Bacs collection actually goes and does not report the choice. The provider’s own advance-notice email is where a date comes from.

Each affected row in the Outstanding list also shows a small DD on its way pill in place of its usual Pay button, and says in words that the money is already on its way and needs nothing from you.

This state is transient. Once the collection captures, the affected charges move to the Settled half of the list; if the collection fails or is cancelled, the pills come off. See Direct Debit for the wider collection lifecycle.

Your own card payment did not finish

If you started a card payment and did not complete it — you closed the page, the app lost its connection, or the payment stalled — the charges stay reserved for your attempt.

The banner says the payment was not confirmed, the affected rows carry a Not finished badge, and, importantly, the Pay button stays. Paying again is what settles the charge: within a short window Syndik8 picks up the same payment where you left off, and after that it replaces it with a fresh one.

Trying again is safe. Before replacing a payment, Syndik8 asks your card provider what became of the original — and if that one did in fact go through, it stops and tells you rather than taking the money a second time.

Pay All stays too, and includes these charges.

Something else is collecting

A card payment made through the hosted page can be handed to your bank to clear over a few days, and a reservation can occasionally outlive the payment that made it. In both cases the money is either already moving or being looked at, so the row carries a Being collected pill in place of its Pay button and says so in words. It deliberately does not say Direct Debit, because none is involved.

A payment clearing at the bank finishes on its own within a few working days. A reservation that has outlived its payment does not always: Syndik8 checks with the provider hourly and frees the charges once it has an answer, but if it cannot get one it leaves them alone rather than risk collecting twice, and an administrator is told. If a row sits in this state for more than a day, ask your syndicate admin to look at it.

What Pay All covers

Nothing reserved: Pay All covers everything outstanding.
Everything reserved by a collection: Pay All is hidden. Trying to pay the same charges while the bank is moving them would create a double charge.
Some reserved, some not: Pay All stays, scoped to what is not being collected, and a line under it names the amount it is leaving out. That is why its total can be lower than the balance above it.

Your own unfinished card payment is not left out of any of those figures. It is money nobody has taken, so it is still money you can pay.

A charge your bank is looking into is left out of Pay All as well, for the opposite reason: nothing is collecting it, and nothing may. See When your bank is looking into a payment.

When your bank is looking into a payment

Ask your bank to take a payment back — a card chargeback, or a claim under the Direct Debit Guarantee — and the charges that payment covered come back onto your balance. You still owe them. What changes is that nothing may take that money again while your bank is deciding: collecting a second time while your bank still holds the first payment is how you end up paying twice for one debt and chasing one back, which is the position disputing was meant to get you out of.

The row says so itself, before you touch anything. In place of its Pay button it carries an Awaiting your bank pill, and a sentence saying that your bank is still looking into the payment this charge was on, so it cannot be paid again until your bank decides — and that you still owe it.

The charge keeps its place in the balance at the top and in the Outstanding list throughout, and it still counts towards what has to be settled before you can leave the syndicate. It is a debt; a dispute does not make it otherwise.

Pay All leaves it out. A banner under the balance header names the held total and says why, whenever any of your charges are held. Where Pay All is on screen, the line under it names the held amount as well — alongside anything a collection is already taking, if both apply — which is why its total can be lower than the balance above. Where everything you owe is held this way there is no Pay All to caption, and the banner carries the account on its own.

You are not chased for it either. The weekly “Balance now due” notice skips a held charge, because it would be asking you to do the one thing nothing will let you do.

The screen does not say when, and that is deliberate. Nothing in Syndik8 predicts when a bank will rule, and no date it holds is a forecast of one, so the row says a charge is held and why, and stops there. A chargeback and an indemnity claim both run on the bank’s clock — for an indemnity claim there is no window Syndik8 enforces at all, because when a claim can be brought is your bank’s call.

Two things end the hold, and neither needs anything from you:

Your bank finds against you. The money is gone for good, so the charge is owed and collectable like any other. If you are on a Direct Debit mandate it goes out on the next nightly collection run, with the usual advance notice; otherwise its Pay button comes back.
Your bank finds in your favour. The money came back, so the charge is settled against the original payment again and moves to the Settled half of the list. A few charges are deliberately left owed instead, each one a case where putting the payment back would be wrong — see Reversals.

If you would rather settle a held charge directly in the meantime — by bank transfer, say — an admin can record a payment against it. That route is deliberately left open while every self-serve one is closed.

See Reversals for what a reversal is and what it does to the ledger.

Payments made outside the app

Not every payment goes through Syndik8. When a member pays by bank transfer into the syndicate account, or hands over cash, an admin records it against them so the ledger matches the bank.

Admins do this from the member’s drilldown: Members → the member’s row → Balance → Record a payment. That opens the member’s outstanding charges, where the admin can record a payment covering everything outstanding or just one charge. The recorded payment clears the charges it covers and appears on the member’s payment history as an External payment.

Two things follow from how this works:

It needs no connected payment account. A syndicate that has not set up online payments can still keep balances accurate this way, and until payments are connected this is the only route.
Charges any payment has already reserved are excluded from a recorded payment, so the same money is never collected twice. A charge a Direct Debit is collecting is marked Collection in progress and clears on its own when the collection completes. A charge held by the member’s own unfinished card payment is marked Card payment not finished: that one does not reliably clear by itself, so ask the member to finish or dismiss the payment, after which the charge becomes recordable again.

The Balance section only appears when an admin is looking at somebody else. An admin settling their own charges uses the admin menu on their own balance screen, alongside the ordinary payment options. Members never see the section at all, and opening the charges screen directly as a non-admin is refused.

Every recorded payment keeps both the member whose charges it cleared and the admin who recorded it, so it is always clear who logged what. A payment recorded in error is undone from Admin → Payments → Reversals, which puts the charges back. No money is sent anywhere: none passed through the payment provider in the first place, so the correction is made on the books alone. See Record a payment from a member.