IN THIS ARTICLE▾
Recurv's pricing for golf clubs splits into two separate cost streams: a fixed monthly platform licence paid by the club, and a per-debit fee paid directly by members.
The first question every Financial Manager asks in a Recurv demo, usually within the first ten minutes, is some version of: "So what does this actually cost us?" It's the right question. Cost models for collection systems have historically been opaque, a per-transaction line, a setup fee, a monthly minimum, an optional add-on, and somewhere in there the actual answer to the budgeting question.
Recurv's commercial model is deliberately built so that the answer is short and clean. There are two cost streams, not one. The club pays one of them. The member pays the other. Neither stream has a per-transaction line item flowing back to the club.
This piece is the long version of that two-line answer. Where each stream sits, why the model is structured this way, and what it means for a club's operating budget.
How most providers price collection today
Most incumbent debit-order providers in South Africa price on a single bundled stream. The club pays a per-transaction fee for every debit raised, and that single fee covers the cost of the rail plus the provider's mandate management, file submission, retry logic, and customer service. Some providers add a setup fee, a monthly minimum, or charge for specific add-ons (mandate hosting, retry attempts beyond a default count, dispute handling).
The practical effect for a club: the collection cost on the club's P&L is *variable*, a function of how many debits ran in a given month, and the per-debit fee is high enough to be a noticeable line item. Clubs typically pass that cost through to members as the "admin fee" or "debit-order fee" line on the member's statement, or absorb it onto club costs if the membership has historically resisted the pass-through.
The banks' debit-order portals follow a similar shape with a different cost structure underneath: per-debit pricing, possibly tiered by volume, with the total flowing through to the club's bank account as a transaction line.
Neither model is malicious. Both are how the market priced this work for a long time. What they have in common is that the cost the club pays moves with the volume of activity, and the cost the member pays moves with it too.
The two-stream model
Recurv splits the cost into two streams that don't overlap.
Stream one is paid by the club: a fixed monthly platform licence. The licence is a set rand value per month, agreed at sign-up, that covers Recurv's platform access, mandate hosting, the recon view, the failed-collection screen, the variable-amount mandate functionality, file-based integration with accounting systems, and ongoing platform maintenance. It's a single line item on the club's operating budget.
It does not vary with the number of debits raised. It does not vary with the number of members. It does not include a per-transaction component on top. The Financial Manager budgets it as a fixed monthly cost and moves on.
Stream two is paid by the member directly: a per-debit transaction fee. When a debit is raised against a member's account, the member sees a small transaction-fee line on their bank statement, the same kind of fee they would have seen with an incumbent provider, but at a rate that's typically up to ~90% lower. The fee covers the underlying rail cost plus a thin margin. The club is not in the middle of this stream: nothing flows through the club's P&L or bank account on the per-transaction side.
The two streams are kept structurally separate. The club's licence is the club's cost. The member's per-debit fee is the member's cost. Neither one feeds back into the other.
Why the model is structured this way
The reasoning behind the split is practical, not ideological.
Predictability is what finance teams want. A budget item that varies month-to-month based on debit volume is harder to plan against than a fixed line. Treasurers and Financial Managers running a club's operating budget benefit from knowing the platform line is exactly the same in March as in November. The fixed monthly licence delivers that.
The rail cost belongs with the rail user. The per-debit cost is, structurally, the cost of the member's bank account being debited via the EFT rail. Charging it to the club and having the club pass it through to the member adds an accounting layer with no benefit; the cost is the same either way, just routed through more ledgers. Charging the member directly removes the layer.
Lower per-debit pricing benefits members directly. A member who used to pay R25 to R35 per debit on incumbent providers, and now pays a fraction of that, sees the saving on their statement. If the saving were instead routed through the club's lower P&L cost, members would never see it unless the committee chose to drop subs in proportion. Direct payment is the cleaner pathway.
The model isn't claiming to be simpler than other models in every dimension. It is claiming that the structural separation of the two streams matches how clubs already think about the cost.
What this means for the club's budget
A club's collection-related cost line, on the operating budget, becomes one entry: the fixed monthly platform licence, multiplied by twelve, set in the budget at the start of the financial year and not revisited.
What goes to zero on the club's side: the per-transaction line. Every debit raised carries no additional cost to the club. There is no monthly minimum. There is no setup fee for new members joining. There is no incremental cost for raising variable amounts, a SAGA card renewal in November, a comp entry in March, a no-show recovery in July all run against the same mandate and incur no additional club-side fee.
This isn't "free". The fixed monthly platform licence is a real cost. It's a line on the budget. It just isn't a *variable* line, and it doesn't have any per-transaction add-ons sitting beside it.
Examples of finance-team questions answered
A few of the questions Financial Managers tend to ask in the demo, with the structural answer.
*"What does it cost if our member count grows from 800 to 900 next year?"* The platform licence is unchanged. The member-paid per-debit fee is paid by each member directly, so the new members carry their own fee. Zero increase to the club.
*"What does it cost if a member pays four different fees in one month, monthly sub, SAGA card, comp entry, locker?"* Same answer. The platform licence is unchanged. The member pays four small per-debit fees directly (or, depending on the cycle structure, a single per-debit fee for the consolidated cycle). Zero variation to the club.
*"What about a member who fails collection three times in one cycle and we have to retry?"* The retry logic runs against the same mandate. The platform handles the retries with no additional cost to the club. The member pays per successful debit, not per retry attempt.
*"What about disputes?"* Standard EFT debit-order dispute mechanism, handled by the platform. No per-dispute charge to the club.
The pattern across these answers is that the *operational complexity* of running collection is handled inside the platform, recovered through the fixed monthly licence, and not exposed to the club as a per-event variable cost.
What this isn't
It isn't an argument that the platform licence is the cheapest possible price for collection software. The relevant comparison is between Recurv's two-stream model and incumbent providers' single-stream model, taking *both* the club's cost and the members' cost into account. Looked at on club-side P&L alone, the platform licence may be higher than what some incumbents charge in club-side fees, but the incumbent's per-transaction line, paid by members on their statements, sits on the comparison too. The full comparison is two streams against one bundled stream, and that's where the two-stream model holds up.
It isn't an offer to charge members more than they currently pay. The member-paid per-debit fee on Recurv is typically up to ~90% lower than what incumbent providers and bank portals pass through to members. Members come out ahead in the comparison; the club's operating budget gets cleaner; both streams move in the right direction.
It isn't "free to the club", the platform licence is a real fixed cost the club budgets for. It's not "zero platform cost" or "the club pays nothing". The accuracy of the model lives in the *predictability* and the *lack of per-transaction overlay*, not in the absence of cost altogether.
Related reading
- How much your members are really paying for debit-order admin fees, and why it should be up to ~90% less
- Every member fee on one system: what changes when SA golf clubs consolidate billing
- The Treasurer's monthly committee report: what changes when recon writes itself
- See how Recurv works for this industry
See how Recurv handles recurring billing for golf clubs.
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