Name and description
How it shows on the public registration form and on the member dashboard.
For membership secretaries and treasurers
Sailing Club Membership Management Software
Tiered memberships, prorated joins, household billing, and a self-service member portal - so the membership secretary stops being the inbox.
The membership secretary problem
Season starts in March. The inbox starts in February.
You know how it goes. The new season is six weeks away and the joining forms are already coming in. Some land in your email, some get posted through the clubhouse letterbox, a few arrive as Facebook messages, and one or two were filled out on paper at a winter social and quietly forgotten about until April.
The master member list lives in a spreadsheet. Or rather, three spreadsheets. There's the one on your laptop, the one the treasurer keeps for fees, and an older copy that someone shared at last year's AGM that nobody has had the heart to delete. None of them quite agree on who is a junior, who is a cadet, and whether the Thompson family counts as one membership or four. See the full comparison if you're weighing up whether to stay on Excel or Google Sheets.
Junior fees need to be different from senior fees. Cadets pay less than juniors. Country members get a discount because they only sail twice a year. Honorary members don't pay at all but still get a vote at the AGM. Family memberships need to bill one person for everyone, but each child still needs their own record because RYA membership is per-person and emergency contacts are per-person and consent flags for photos in the newsletter are per-person.
Then somebody asks "is so-and-so still paid up, can they enter the open meeting?" and you spend twenty minutes hunting through bank statements. By June, three members have quietly lapsed and nobody noticed until they showed up to the regatta. By August, you're doing membership admin instead of sailing.
SailHQ is built for that exact pile of work. The membership module handles the things that actually eat your evenings: tiered fees, prorated joins, family billing, junior age gates, payment tracking, and a self-service portal so members fix their own contact details. The rest of this page walks through it.
Membership types
Membership types as flexible as your club
Every sailing club has its own taxonomy. Senior, Junior, Cadet, Family, Country, Honorary, Life. Some clubs split it further with a Student tier, others lump everyone over 18 into "Adult". SailHQ doesn't pick for you. You configure your own list and reorder it however you like.
Each membership type carries its own settings:
Annual fee
The full-year price. Prorated automatically for mid-season joiners (more on that below).
Voting rights flag
Whether this tier votes at the AGM. Useful for keeping juniors and country members out of the count if your constitution says so.
Duty exemption flag
Whether this tier is in the duty rota or sits outside it. Honorary and Life members usually want this off.
Age gates
Min and max age for the type. Stops a 14-year-old accidentally signing up for senior fees, and stops a 30-year-old paying junior rates.
Family flag
Marks the type as a household membership so it links to the family billing flow.
The list is sortable, so you can drag the most-used types to the top of the registration dropdown. Add a new type mid-season and it shows up immediately. Retire one you no longer use and it stops appearing on new registrations without breaking historic records.
Prorated subscriptions
Prorated subscriptions for mid-season joiners
Asking somebody for a full annual fee in late August is one of the fastest ways to lose a new member. SailHQ does the proration for you, so the joining figure they see on screen actually matches the time left in the year.
Joins in Q1 (Jan-Mar)
100%
Full year ahead. Pays the full annual fee.
Joins in Q2 (Apr-Jun)
75%
Three quarters of the season left.
Joins in Q3 (Jul-Sep)
50%
Half the season left. Half the fee.
Joins in Q4 (Oct-Dec)
25%
A single quarter to ride out before renewal.
Proration is configurable per membership type. If your club prefers to keep things simple and bill the full annual fee no matter when somebody joins, switch proration off on that type. If you want quarterly proration on adult tiers but a flat junior fee, that works too. The flag sits on the membership type, not the global setting, so you can mix and match.
For the new member, all of this is invisible. They pick a membership type, the system shows them the prorated price, and they pay the right amount the first time. No follow-up email, no manual adjustment, no awkward "actually it should be..." conversation.
Households and families
Household and family groupings, sorted
Family memberships are where most spreadsheets fall over. The bill needs to go to one person. The members are several people. Each child needs their own record. SailHQ models this properly.
One bill-payer
The household has a primary member who receives the family fee invoice. You can set both parents as primary so either of them can manage household settings.
Each member is a member
Every junior in the family has their own profile, their own login, their own emergency contacts, and their own RYA number. They are not just line items on a parent record.
Linked, not duplicated
The household record ties everyone together. Filter the membership list by household to pull a family up in one view. Change an address once, it updates for everyone.
The practical effect: the eternal "do my kids count as members?" question has a clean answer. Yes. They each have a record, they each appear in the directory, they each get their own portal login when they're old enough. The bill goes to a parent. Photos uploaded for safeguarding consent are stored against the right child, not bolted onto an adult's profile.
For race admin, this means a 12-year-old child entering a junior series shows up correctly as a junior, not as a footnote on Mum's account. For the membership secretary, it means renewal time doesn't involve mentally untangling whose RYA number is whose.
Self-service portal
A member portal that stops the email chase
Every member gets their own login. From their portal they can update everything that you used to receive as an email asking you to update something on their behalf.
Membership status and paid-up date
See at a glance whether they are active and when their renewal is due.
Contact details
Address, phone, email - edited once, updated everywhere.
Registered boats
Add a new boat, update sail numbers, retire an old one.
Emergency contacts
Critical for safety on the water and at junior events.
Health and medical
RYA number, Powerboat Level 2, First Aid, VHF, swim flag, injuries, medication, GP details.
Consent flags
Social media, video and photo consent - tracked per member, not assumed.
Upcoming events and duties
Members see what is coming up without having to ask.
Renewals and lapsed members
Renewals, statuses, and the lapsed-member problem
The bit that costs clubs real money is members quietly drifting off without anyone noticing until they have moved to another club. SailHQ tracks status, payment state, and history so nobody slips through the gap.
Member statuses
- active - in good standing
- pending_approval - waiting on you
- lapsed - record kept, access off
Payment statuses
- paid - date recorded
- unpaid - waiting on payment
- overdue - past the deadline
Membership dashboard
187
Total
162
Active
4
Pending
14
Lapsed
7
Unpaid
The admin membership list is filterable by status, type, payment state, and household. Search by name, sort by joined date or paid-up date, view the full profile, manually create members, approve people in the pending queue, or change a status with one click. Every status change is recorded in an audit log: who changed what, when, from what to what. If a committee member queries why somebody is lapsed, you can show them the trail.
One thing to be straight about: SailHQ does not yet automate renewal billing. The renewal tracking is in. Statuses, payment dates, dashboard counts, lapsed-member visibility. The renewal charging via GoCardless or Stripe is on the roadmap, not in production. For now, clubs collect renewals through whatever they currently use (bank transfer, standing order, existing DD provider) and update payment status in SailHQ. If your club is weighing up Direct Debit specifically, our guide to GoCardless for sailing clubs covers the fees, the mandate flow, and what to know before you sign up. Once card and Direct Debit charging ship, the same record-keeping will handle automatic billing. We'd rather tell you that now than have you find out after signing up.
GDPR-friendly by default
Member data is personal data. SailHQ treats it that way.
Members can request a full export of their personal data and ask for deletion through the portal. Consent flags for marketing, photography, and video are stored against each member individually so you can prove what each person agreed to. Data sits on UK-based servers with HTTPS, hashed passwords, and role-based access so committee members only see what they need for their role.
Full breakdown on the GDPR page and the security page.
Pricing
Per-member, transparent, no surprises
Pricing scales with the size of your club. Smaller clubs pay less. The membership module is included on every plan.
Starter
For smaller clubs
Membership types, household billing, self-service portal, renewal tracking. Everything on this page.
Club
For mid-size clubs
Everything in Starter, plus the full race duty, boat booking, and event modules.
Most clubs
Membership FAQ
Questions membership secretaries ask
Things that come up on every demo call.
Public registration is built in. New joiners fill out a registration form with their details, pick the relevant membership type, and land in a pending approval queue. The membership secretary reviews each request, approves or rejects it, and the new member gets login details for their self-service portal. You can also create members manually from the admin dashboard if someone joins by post or in person.
Subscriptions are prorated quarterly. Someone joining in July pays 50% of the annual fee (covering Q3 and Q4). A joiner in October pays 25% (Q4 only). You can also configure a membership type to charge a flat annual fee regardless of join date if that suits your club better. Each membership type has its own setting, so you can prorate juniors but bill seniors annually if you wish.
Yes. Send your existing Excel or Google Sheets export and we will import your members during onboarding. Most spreadsheet migrations are completed within 1-2 days. You can also create members manually from the admin dashboard at any point. Migration support is included with every plan.
Families are handled as a household. One household record links the parents and any junior members under the same roof. The bill for the family membership goes to a single primary member, but each child still has their own member account, login, and dashboard. Both parents can be marked as primary on the household so either can manage things.
SailHQ tracks payment status (paid, unpaid, overdue) and records payment dates, so you always know who is paid up. It does not yet automatically charge cards or pull Direct Debits - GoCardless and Stripe integration are on the roadmap. For now, clubs collect renewals through their existing bank or DD provider and update payment status in SailHQ. The chasing and visibility piece is solved; the charging piece is coming.
Members carry a status of active, pending_approval, or lapsed. The admin dashboard shows a count of lapsed members and lets you filter the membership list by status. You can mark someone as lapsed manually, and every status change is recorded in an audit log so you can see who changed what and when. Lapsed members keep their record - they are not deleted - so reinstating them later is straightforward.
Yes. Every member has a self-service portal where they can update contact details, emergency contacts, health and medical information, RYA membership and qualifications, register their boats, and manage consent flags for things like social media and video. The membership secretary stops being a typing service for change-of-address notes.
All data is stored on UK-based servers with HTTPS encryption, hashed passwords, and role-based access controls. SailHQ provides tools for data export, deletion requests, and consent management, in line with UK GDPR. Members can request access to their personal data at any time. See the GDPR page for full detail.
Take the membership admin off your hands
Stop being the inbox. Let members register, renew, and update their own details. We'll help you migrate your existing list and have you running by next season.