Tiverton Swimming Club

Making a splash with automated payments

Tiverton Swimming Club is a 111-year-old grassroots swimming organisation based in Devon. Its roughly 60 volunteers support more than 160 members with training and competition pathways at the county, regional and international level.

“There’s a very strong community thread through the club, often with three generations of families swimming or volunteering, from parents to children to grandchildren,” said Sara Dilks, the club’s Chairwoman. “But nurturing the development of hundreds of members generates a lot of admin behind the scenes, particularly when it comes to payments.”

To free its volunteers from spiralling admin around collecting squad and competition fees, payments for club shop purchases and Swim England memberships, Tiverton has turned to Swim Manager with automated payments from GoCardless. And now it has more time and money to invest in providing better training and opportunities to its members.

Spreadsheet nightmare

Tiverton’s previous payment processes revolved around a combination of spreadsheets, cash, standing orders, and a clunky, outdated Direct Debit system. The club’s volunteers often found themselves struggling to keep track of squad fees that varied based on membership type, competitions attended and events entered. 

“Everyone’s paying different amounts and there’s a lot of money that goes straight out to other organisations, so visibility and revenue security is important when managing the club’s finances,” said Sara. “But the membership secretary and treasurers’ spreadsheets never matched. Neither did the information we got from our Direct Debit system, which wasn’t connected with our membership database, so it was always difficult to tell exactly who had paid, who hadn’t and why.”

Asking members to update their direct debit when membership fees increased, sometimes by just a few pounds to cover pool fees or rising Swim England costs, also took a lot of time and led to missed revenue.

“Any delays in members making those changes meant lost money for the club, which we couldn’t always see,” added Sara.

Membership management and payments, all in one place

Sara and the team went out in search of a solution to bring membership management and payments into one system, with a single view of the truth.

“We chose Swim Manager which comes with GoCardless’ automated invoicing and collection out of the box,” said Sara. “That instantly gave us a clear audit trail on payments. Now the club’s leadership can all see exactly what's going on, and we’ve reduced payments admin by at least a day a week – no more late nights spent picking through spreadsheets and bank statements.”

The grind of managing and collecting membership fees is now a distant memory.

“We can take part payment from members that join halfway through the month and we’ve only had two failed payments in a year," added Sara. "Annual fee changes are now just a case of updating the cost for each membership category in the database, which automatically updates all future payments."

GoCardless makes it similarly simple to collect payments for competition fees or purchases from the club shop. “Collecting ad-hoc payments from members is easy,” said Sara. “We just raise an invoice and it’s automatically collected when it’s due.”

More money to invest in the club

The club is now confident it’s collecting all the money it’s owed, which helps it plan for the future and better serve members.

“GoCardless has helped to recoup potentially hundreds of pounds a month in missed revenue,” said Sara. “GoCardless has made us feel much more financially secure and we’re in a stronger position to invest in training for coaches or in additional support for our swimmers at meets. The system is worth its weight in gold.”

Less stress for volunteers

Although there are transaction fees to consider when using GoCardless compared to standing order, Sara says the cost is marginal when set against the efficiency and cashflow improvements – and the lower stress levels for volunteers.

“GoCardless also gives back to the sport, through its Swim England sponsorship, which helps the governing body put on the national meets that are so important to our swimmers’ development,” she said.