As you are probably aware, it takes a great amount of valuable volunteer time, dedication and organisation to run a sports club like ours. One area that consumes much of our time, and also causes a lot of hassle for everyone, is the collection of weekly match fees. This season the Club will be abandoning its ancient tradition of writing down who has paid their match fees on a piece of paper (sometimes crumpled, sometimes not) and will be recording all this information on a new app.
Whilst this change is one of those behind the scenes things that doesn’t normally affect most of you (it will after all still be the captains collecting the money and recording who has paid), it does give us the opportunity to pay electronically, avoiding the hassle of needing cash in the wallet, or going to the cashpoint prior to the games.
We are also making a small adjustment to the Match fees this year, students/colts will rise from £5 to £7, and adults will move from £10 to £11, this is to cover the costs per game which includes Teas, Umpires and Scorers, in many cases last season the amount collected did not cover these costs, so this should help with that.
We will be using the Slate app (https://slateapp.co.uk/) which offers the Club the ability to create a direct debit payment request, you then authorise this request using the free app and your match fees are taken from your account automatically. This app can be found on whatever App store your mobile phone uses
In the coming week you will receive an email invite from Slate, inviting you to download and register with Slate. It takes two minutes to do so and would appreciate you getting this done by the first game if possible (16th April). If you have any problems with getting set up on Slate, please contact the Players Rep James Mans (07970413048 or james.mans@btinternet.com) for assistance.
Initially this will just be used for Senior Cricket over the weekend, and the invitations will be sent to the parents of the colts who take part in the senior sides
Thank you for your support on this and helping to take the club forward
Questions:
1. Is it secure / does the club get my bank details? Slate partners with Gocardless which is a known electronic payment provider similar to Paypal. The systems are secure and encrypted to international standards. All payment is dealt with by Gocardless, the Club and Slate do not have access to any of your bank details.
2. Can the club take money without my permission? No, the system works by sending you a request to authorise the payment which you do via the free app on your phone, if the request isn’t authorised then no payment is made. If you have a child playing for an adult team, you just need to sign them up with a unique email address for each child but you can use the same bank details for multiple people. They can then log into the app and pay their match fees or you can do it if you prefer.
3. Is this going to cost me anything? No, there is a transaction fee but the club will be absorbing this and not passing it on to members.