Can families pay team fees with a card or bank transfer?

Yes. Payments run through Stripe and support credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH bank transfers. Families pay as part of registration, from their phone, in one sitting.

Where does the money go when someone pays?

Directly to your organization's bank account through your connected Stripe account. Sideline never holds your funds. There is no club balance sitting on the platform waiting to be paid out.

How do I collect fees that come up mid-season, like tournament dues?

Send an invoice. You can bill an entire team or individual families for tournament entries, uniforms, equipment, or any one-off cost. Each invoice tracks who has paid and who still owes, the same as registration fees.

What does it cost to collect fees online?

Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per card transaction. Sideline adds a platform fee of 1.5% on the free plan, 1.0% on Club ($29/month), or 0.75% on Pro ($79/month). There are no setup fees and no contracts.

Can I see who has paid and who still owes?

Yes. Your dashboard shows payment status per player and per charge, updated automatically when a payment comes in. You can also export the data to CSV.

Does this work for adult teams where players pay for themselves?

Yes. Sideline has an adult mode where players register and pay for themselves, with no parent or guardian step. It works the same way for rec leagues, adult rugby, softball, and similar teams.

How to Collect Team Fees Online (Without Chasing Anyone)

If you handle money for a sports club, you know the routine. Registration opens, half the families pay quickly, and then you spend the next six weeks chasing the rest. A check gets handed to a coach and disappears into a gym bag. Someone swears they paid on Venmo, and you scroll through three months of transactions trying to prove it either way.

Collecting fees is the least fun part of running a club, and it is usually the job nobody volunteered for. The good news: it is also the easiest part to fix. Here is what actually works.

Why Venmo, Checks, and Spreadsheets Break Down

Most clubs start with some mix of personal payment apps, paper checks, and a spreadsheet. It works at small scale and then quietly falls apart:

No connection between paying and registering. The payment lives in one place, the player info in another, and a human has to match them up. Every mismatch becomes a phone call.
Personal accounts get messy. When dues flow through a volunteer's personal Venmo or PayPal, club money mixes with personal money. That is uncomfortable for the volunteer, awkward at tax time, and a real problem if the board ever needs an audit trail.
No receipts, no records. When a family asks "did we pay for both kids?", the answer should not depend on someone's memory.
The spreadsheet is always stale. The moment you export or re-key anything, it is out of date. Payment tracking only works when it updates itself.

None of this is a discipline problem. It is a tooling problem. Volunteers running a 100-player club should not need to build their own accounts-receivable system.

What Good Online Fee Collection Looks Like

Whatever tool you use, four things separate a real solution from a payment link taped to a spreadsheet:

Payment happens at registration. The family fills out the form, signs the waiver, and pays in one sitting. No one is "registered but unpaid" unless you decide to allow it.
Money goes to the organization, not a person. Fees should land in the club bank account directly, with the platform never holding your funds.
Tracking is automatic. You should be able to open a dashboard and see who has paid and who still owes, per player and per charge, without touching a spreadsheet.
One-off charges are easy. The season fee is never the only fee. Tournament dues, uniforms, and equipment costs come later, and each one needs the same tracking as registration.

How It Works in Sideline

Sideline ties fee collection directly to registration. You set the fee on each team's registration form, share the link, and families pay by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or ACH bank transfer as part of signing up. Payment records attach to the player automatically, so your roster and your books are the same list.

Money moves through Stripe, straight from the payer to your organization's bank account. Sideline never holds your funds. Connecting your Stripe account takes about ten minutes and is the only financial setup you do.

For everything after registration, send an invoice. Charge a whole team for a weekend tournament, bill uniform deposits, or collect a one-off equipment cost. Families pay online, and your dashboard shows exactly who has paid and who still owes on every charge. If you need the data elsewhere, export it to CSV.

For adult teams and rec leagues, the same flow works without the parent step: players register and pay for themselves.

What It Costs

Online payments are never free, so here is the honest math. Card processing through Stripe runs 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, which is what you would pay using Stripe on your own. Sideline adds a small platform fee on top: 1.5% on the free Starter plan, 1.0% on Club ($29/month), and 0.75% on Pro ($79/month).

On a $150 registration fee, that is roughly $7 in total fees on the free plan. Compare that to the real cost of the manual route: hours of volunteer time, payments that never arrive, and fees you forget to collect at all. Most clubs find that simply collecting everything they are owed covers the processing costs several times over.

The Starter plan itself is free for up to 3 teams and 75 players, with no credit card required to set up, so you can try the whole flow before a single real payment moves.

Set It Up This Week

You can move fee collection online in an afternoon:

Create your organization at trysideline.com/get-started (free, about 2 minutes)
Add your teams and set the registration fee on each form
Connect your Stripe account so money flows to the club bank account
Share each team's registration link with your families or players

From there, every registration collects its own fee, every payment records itself, and the chasing mostly stops. Questions? We answer them at support@trysideline.com.