Monthly Dues

Overview

Most flying clubs charge a flat monthly membership fee on top of per-hour flight charges — dues that cover insurance, tie-down or hangar rent, subscriptions, and the other fixed costs of keeping a club running whether the planes fly or not. Tracking those dues by hand is tedious and easy to get wrong: someone has to remember to add a line to every member's account, every month, without double-billing anyone or charging a member who left mid-month.

Centerline's Monthly Dues feature turns that recurring chore into a two-minute task. You set the dues amount once, then run a single billing pass each month that creates a dues charge for the members you select. It's deliberately a manual step rather than an automatic charge — you decide when dues go out and exactly who gets billed — but the tedious parts (calculating the amount, avoiding duplicates, skipping locked-out members) are handled for you.

Monthly Dues requires Billing to be enabled and is managed by the Account Owner under Setup → Billing.

Setting the Dues Amount

1. Go to Setup → Billing.
2. On the Monthly Dues card, turn on Monthly Dues and enter the flat amount charged to each member per month.
3. Save your changes.

This is an organization-wide amount — every member you bill in a given run is charged the same figure. If your club has tiered dues, use manual billing entries for the exceptions (see Managing Billing Entries).

Running Dues Billing

There is no automatic charge — dues are created only when you run them. To bill a month:

1. On the Monthly Dues card, click Run dues billing.
2. Choose a transaction date. The billing month is derived from this date, so pick a date within the month you're billing for.
3. Review the checklist of active members. Everyone eligible is listed and selected by default; uncheck anyone you don't want to bill this run. Locked-out members are excluded automatically.
4. Confirm to create a dues charge for each selected member.

Each charge is categorized as Dues (see the chart of accounts in Billing Overview) so it maps cleanly to the Dues product in the QuickBooks export.

No Double-Billing

Dues are idempotent per member per month. Each dues charge is tagged with its billing period (the month derived from the transaction date), and Centerline enforces one dues charge per member per month. If you run dues billing again for a month a member has already been billed for, that member is simply skipped — you can't accidentally charge someone twice.

This makes the feature safe to re-run. If you billed most of the club on the 1st and a few new members joined on the 5th, you can run dues again for the same month and only the members who were missed will be charged.

Required Role

Only the Account Owner can set the dues amount and run dues billing. Members see the resulting charge on their Charges tab like any other entry.

Tips

• Pick a consistent day each month. Running dues on the same date (say, the 1st) keeps billing periods clean and makes it obvious at a glance whether a month has been run yet.
• Re-run without worry. Because dues are idempotent, running the pass a second time to catch new members won't double-charge anyone who was already billed.
• Uncheck members on leave. If a member is temporarily inactive but not locked out, simply uncheck them for that run rather than adjusting their account.
• Use manual entries for exceptions. Prorated first months, tiered dues, or one-off waivers are best handled as manual billing entries so the automated run stays simple and predictable.