Customers and billing accounts

What a customer is

A customer connects three things:

• People: the family’s swimmers, and the parents who can log in and pay.
• A billing email and payment methods: where invoices go and how they get charged.
• Billing activity: enrollments, queued charges, invoices, and credit.

Customers are created automatically when a family registers. One family is one customer, even with several swimmers. That’s what lets you bill a household once.

You can also create one yourself:

• From the new swimmer checklist. When you add a swimmer by hand, the Family account step of their setup checklist offers Create family account, or Join family account when the family already has one. See Set up a new swimmer.
• From a swimmer’s Billing tab. If a swimmer isn’t on any account, their Billing tab offers Create New Customer. If a parent or sibling already has an account, Commit adds the swimmer (and their parents) to it and says “Added swimmer to existing account: account name”. It only creates a new account when nobody in the family has one yet.

Step by step

Web app Mobile app

1. Open Payments → Customers. The billing summary tiles at the top are estimates and can lag up to 24 hours. For exact totals for any date range, click Run financial report at the top of the Billing summary (staff with Reports access see it). It opens a new financial report, ready for a name and dates.

   

   In the grid, Payment shows whether a payment method is on file, and Payment Type shows what kind the family’s default is: Card, Bank (ACH), or your country’s bank type (Bank (PAD), Bank (BECS), Bank (Bacs)). Use Columns to show or hide it.

   

2. Click any customer to open their account. From there you can:

   • Edit (top right) to change the name or billing email.
   • Add swimmer or Add parent to attach people to the account.
   • Create invoice, next to Invoice history. It bills the family now or by a due date. Pending items queue for the next cycle.
   • Add credit: the ⋯ on Customer credit → Adjust balance. Credit applies to the family’s next invoice on its own, and anything left over carries forward. View history in the same menu shows every adjustment and which invoice used it.
   • Verify a family’s new bank account for them by entering Stripe’s micro-deposit amounts or code, and send a receipt for any paid invoice.
   • Choose Autocharge customer (charge the card on file automatically) or Request payment (email the invoice), and whether to Pass on service fees.

3. Use Hide from list (the eye icon on a customer’s row) for departed families. Hiding doesn’t delete history, and you can unhide any time.

   

Accounts that need a look

The Customers tab runs four health checks. When one finds something, a Needs a look row shows above the grid on the web with a chip for it. Click a chip to see those accounts, or its × to hide it. Clearing them keeps billing predictable:

• N swimmers without an account: an active swimmer isn’t on any customer, so nothing about them can be billed. Add them to the right family with Add swimmer, or click Magically assign and Commit puts them on customer accounts for you. This chip opens the roster with those swimmers.
• N customers share a member: the same swimmer or parent is on two accounts, which usually means a duplicate. Remove them from the wrong one.
• N with unknown billing: an enrollment isn’t tied to a current program, so it’s unclear what to bill. Open the customer and fix the enrollment.
• N inactive with open billing: a family with no active swimmers still has enrollments, open invoices, or scheduled charges. Cancel what shouldn’t bill, or collect what’s owed. In this view, Refresh flagged re-syncs those accounts with Stripe if you fixed something and the list looks stale.

View all customers takes you back to the full list.

Common questions

A parent says they see two billing accounts. They’re on two customers, usually one per swimmer from separate registrations. Move all swimmers onto one customer and hide the other.

Where do I change what a family is charged? Their charges come from program enrollments, meet entries, and queued items. Manage those on the customer page and in your invoices.

Is there a credit limit? Credit can only reduce what’s owed (no positive balances), and accounts cap at $5,000 of credit. Past that, email us.

Can two divorced parents get separate bills? One family account means one billing email and one payer. Both parents can log in and see everything, but Commit can’t split one swimmer’s charges across two accounts. The usual setup: the paying parent’s email goes on the billing account, and the other parent keeps their own login for schedules, meets, and results.