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Help › Events, camps & polls › Minimum numbers (pledges)

Minimum numbers for an event

An away trip, a residential, a coach hired for the day — some events only make sense once enough people are actually coming, and the club carries the risk if it books the venue first and the numbers don't show up. Minimum numbers flips that around: members pledge a payment method when they book, and nobody is charged a penny until you decide it's going ahead.

Before you start

This needs your club connected for online payments under Settings → Payments — until then, the "Minimum numbers" fieldset just tells you to connect Stripe.

Setting it up

  1. Open the event's details form (a new event, or the inline editor on an existing one).
  2. In the Minimum numbers fieldset, tick Only go ahead if enough people pledge — nobody is charged until you confirm.
  3. Set People needed and Decide by — the date has to fall before the event's first date, and both can still be adjusted later while nobody has been charged.
  4. Save. The public booking page now offers members the pledge option instead of taking payment there and then.

What the member sees

The event page shows a banner ("Going ahead if 20 people sign up by 15 Oct — 12 so far") alongside the normal ticket picker. Booking pledges rather than pays: they save a card or Direct Debit through a secure Stripe checkout, and the amount is only taken if you confirm — a family of four pledges four tickets' worth and counts as four toward your target. From their confirmation email, or from their own booking page if they're signed in, they can withdraw at any time before you confirm, or add a backup payment method.

Confirming — the Pledges panel

On the event page, the Pledges panel lists everyone who has pledged with their headcount, amount and status, against your target. Once you've decided it's happening, an owner or admin clicks Confirm and charge (you'll get a warning first if you're still below target). From there it runs on its own:

  1. It tries the payment method they pledged with.
  2. If that fails and they added a backup, it tries the backup.
  3. If that also fails and they already have a card or Direct Debit saved with your club, it tries that.
  4. If every attempt fails, they're emailed a secure payment link with 72 hours to pay before their place is given up.

A Direct Debit shows as "paid (clearing)" until it settles a few days later. While a pledge is still open or being charged, you can't mark its booking paid by hand — that's to stop it being charged twice. Once every attempt has failed and someone's on the 72-hour pay link, you can record a payment they made another way — cash or bank transfer — with Mark paid, the same as any other held booking.

Decide it isn't happening instead, and Cancel pledges releases everyone — nobody is charged and everyone is told so. The same thing happens automatically if the decide-by date passes while it's still open.

What stays the same

Ticket types, capacity, sibling discounts and refunds all work as normal — a pledge just holds a real place with real tickets rather than an unpledged booking, so lowering capacity below what's already pledged is refused, the same as for any other booking.

Plan: Events are available on every plan, including Free. Pledges use your connected Stripe account; a 1% platform fee applies on top of Stripe's own processing fee when a pledge is charged.

Related articles

  • Events and camps

    How to set up one-off events, holiday camps and trips in Adminished: tickets and capacity, the sibling discount, the public booking page and post-event reporting.

  • Reserve with a card

    Ask people on an interest list to pledge a payment method. They are only charged if you confirm by your decide-by date — never automatically, and never before then.

  • Require payment in advance

    Turn on "Require payment in advance" so an event place is only confirmed once it is paid for by card — no more holding seats for people who never pay.

  • Taking payments

    Generate monthly charges, record cash or bank-transfer payments, and see who still owes money at a glance.

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