- You must hold a finance role on the organisation to raise assessments.
- The organisation must be on a paid or comped platform plan to use the member portal and office actions.
- Stripe must be configured on the platform for online payment to work.
- The organisation must have completed Stripe Connect onboarding before members can pay online.
- Only active, non-archived members who are not life or honorary members receive an assessment.
Step by step
- Open 'Raise the annual charge' in the Finance menu
In the left navigation, find the Finance group — its label matches your organisation's kind, so a lodge sees 'Finance'. Select the action called 'Raise the annual charge'. The heading on the screen itself may use your organisation's own word for dues if one has been set, but the nav entry and the destination are the same regardless.
- Check the pre-filled year and amount
The screen loads with your organisation's current dues amount and the current year already filled in. You will see three fields — year, amount, and due-by date — plus a description field. Adjust any of these before continuing.
- Click 'See who would be billed' to run a preview
Submit the form to trigger the preview. The system looks up every non-archived member, finds any assessments already raised for that year, and sorts the roll into members who would be billed, members who would be left out, and members already assessed. Nothing is saved at this point.
- Review the preview and excuse any members if needed
The screen shows a summary — how many members would be billed, the amount each would owe, and the total. Below that you can see who is excluded and why. Tick the checkbox next to any eligible member's name to excuse them from this round. Members you excused on a previous preview are carried forward automatically so they are not silently re-included.
- Confirm by clicking 'Raise N assessments'
When you are satisfied, click the 'Raise N assessments' button — it stays disabled if there is no one to bill. The system creates one dues-assessment record per eligible member, marked as due, with the amount, due date, and description you set. You will see a summary sentence confirming how many assessments were raised.
- Open 'Take payments online' to check your Stripe connection
Back in the Finance group, open the 'Take payments online' action. The screen reads your current Stripe Connect status. If you are not yet connected, you will see a button to begin setup.
- Complete Stripe Connect onboarding
Click 'Set up payments with Stripe'. The system creates or retrieves a Stripe Connect account for your organisation and redirects you to Stripe's own onboarding pages. Follow the steps Stripe presents. When you return, the screen re-reads your status from Stripe and updates the record to show that charges are enabled.
- Member opens the dues page in the portal
A signed-in member navigates to the dues section of the member portal. The page verifies their session, confirms the organisation accepts payments, and loads their outstanding assessments and past payments. They see their current balance, a list of what they owe with checkboxes, and a history of receipts.
- Member selects assessments and clicks 'Pay online'
The member ticks the assessments they want to pay and submits. The system checks that Stripe is configured and that your organisation's Stripe Connect account exists. If either is missing, an error message tells the member to contact the secretary or treasurer. If everything is in order, it moves on to create a checkout session.
- A Stripe Checkout session is created
The system confirms your Stripe account can accept a charge today, fetches the selected assessments, and builds line items from each one's outstanding balance and description. It creates a Stripe Checkout session as a direct charge on your connected account, records the session details, and returns the hosted checkout URL to the member's browser.
- Member completes payment on Stripe's page
The member's browser is sent to Stripe's hosted checkout page, where they enter their card details. On a successful payment, Stripe redirects them back to the portal dues page, which shows a notice explaining the payment is being confirmed.
- Webhook records the payment and updates the assessment
Stripe sends a payment confirmation event to Daviah. The handler claims the event to prevent it being recorded twice, verifies it came from the correct Stripe account, and creates a payment record showing the method as Stripe along with a receipt number. Each assessed amount is recomputed so the outstanding balance is reduced to zero. An audit entry is written.
What happens next
Every eligible active member now has a dues-assessment record for the year showing the amount due. Members who pay online have a matching payment record created by the Stripe webhook, with their outstanding balance reduced to zero, a receipt number assigned, and the amount paid updated on the assessment. The portal shows those members nothing owing and a receipt in their payments list.
Good to know
The preview step is safe to run more than once. Members you excused in an earlier preview are remembered as hidden inputs so they are not quietly re-added if you come back to check the numbers before confirming.
Life members and honorary members are not included in an assessment. If a member should not be billed for another reason, use the excuse checkbox during the preview rather than changing their membership status.
Daviah — Set the year's dues amount, assess every eligible member in one action, and collect payments securely through Stripe.