Membership Fee Management & Payment Plans
Wampums handles the full membership fee lifecycle from invoice to reconciliation. When registration opens, the system generates a fee record for each participant based on the rates you configure — which can vary by section, age group, or registration date. Parents receive a fee notice in their preferred language with a link to pay online, a breakdown of what the fee covers, and the option to choose a payment plan if your group offers installment billing.
Payment plans allow families to spread the cost across two, three, or four payments on a schedule you define. Automatic reminders notify parents when each installment is due, and the system flags overdue amounts without any manual follow-up from the treasurer. An at-a-glance collection dashboard shows total fees invoiced, total collected, and outstanding balances by section — making it easy to communicate financial status to the group committee at monthly meetings.
Expense Tracking with AI Receipt Parsing
Recording expenses is the task most treasurers dread most. After a camp supply run, a leader returns with a bundle of receipts, each of which needs to be manually transcribed into a spreadsheet: date, vendor, amount, tax, category. Wampums eliminates most of this manual work through AI-assisted receipt parsing. A leader photographs the receipt with their phone camera, and Wampums extracts the vendor name, transaction date, total amount, and applicable taxes automatically using optical character recognition.
The extracted data is presented in a review form pre-populated with the parsed values, allowing the leader to confirm, correct, or enrich the entry before saving. Expenses are categorized by type — supplies, transportation, venue rental, food, badges — and tagged with a payment method (cash, debit, credit, cheque). Multiple receipts from a single shopping trip can be batched into one submission session. All expense records are auditable with a full history of who submitted what and when.
Budget Management — Plan vs. Actual
Before the scouting year begins, the group committee approves an annual budget. Wampums provides a budget builder that maps income and expense lines to categories, with targets for each. As the year progresses and real transactions are recorded, the budget dashboard updates automatically to show actual versus planned figures for every line. Green indicators mean you're on track; amber and red flags alert the treasurer before a budget line is exhausted.
Budget forecasting takes into account outstanding fee receivables, scheduled expenses for upcoming activities, and confirmed fundraiser commitments. This gives the treasurer a forward-looking view rather than just a historical one — critical for making informed decisions about discretionary spending mid-year. Budget snapshots can be exported at any point for committee review, and the year-end comparison report is ready for council submission without any additional formatting.
Fundraiser Management & Per-Participant Tracking
Fundraisers are a cornerstone of scout group financing, but tracking them is notoriously messy. Whether it is a cookie drive, a bottle drive, a calendar sale, or a popcorn campaign, each fundraiser involves collecting money from dozens of families, reconciling the amounts, and often awarding participation recognition to top sellers. Wampums provides a dedicated fundraiser module with a calendar view that displays all active and scheduled fundraisers on a single timeline so nothing overlaps unexpectedly.
Per-participant tracking lets you record how many units each scout has sold and how much money they have returned. Real-time totals update as entries are recorded, showing group progress toward the fundraiser goal as a percentage and a dollar figure. Leaders can produce a leaderboard for motivational purposes or a participation summary for awarding badges tied to fundraising milestones. Once the fundraiser closes, Wampums calculates the net proceeds and transfers the total to the relevant budget line automatically.
Revenue Dashboard — All Sources in One View
A scout group's revenue comes from many sources: registration fees, activity charges, fundraiser proceeds, council transfers, donations, and grant income. Keeping these sources visible and reconciled is essential for accurate financial reporting, but most volunteer treasurers manage them in separate spreadsheets or not at all. Wampums consolidates every revenue stream into a single dashboard organized by source category and time period.
The revenue dashboard shows total income year-to-date alongside a month-by-month trend chart. Each income category is drillable — tap on "fundraiser proceeds" to see the breakdown by event, or tap on "activity charges" to see which activities have been invoiced and which have been collected. The dashboard updates in real time as transactions are recorded, giving the treasurer and committee chair an accurate financial picture at any moment without waiting for a monthly report to be compiled manually.
Financial Reports for Council Submission
Most scouting councils require annual or semi-annual financial reports from chartered groups. These reports typically demand a summary of income and expenditure, a statement of the year-end balance, and supporting detail for major budget lines. Wampums generates all of these automatically from the transaction data already recorded throughout the year. The year-end report wizard walks the treasurer through any final adjustments, closing entries, or notes required before exporting a print-ready PDF.
All financial reports in Wampums are bilingual: field labels, column headings, and report titles render in English or French depending on the language selected at export time. This ensures groups operating in French-speaking regions or serving bilingual communities can meet council requirements without translating reports manually. Custom report ranges let you generate interim statements for any period — useful for grant applications, committee meetings, or responding to an auditor's questions mid-year.
Activity-Level Cost Tracking
Every outing, camp, and event has its own cost structure: venue, transportation, food, supplies, insurance, and optional participant charges. Wampums allows leaders to attach a financial envelope to each activity, defining the expected costs and the per-participant fee if applicable. As expenses are recorded against the activity, the cost-per-head figure updates automatically, making it straightforward to see whether an activity is running over budget before it is too late to adjust.
Activity finance reports show total activity costs against total participant fees collected, revealing the net subsidy or surplus for each event. This is particularly valuable for multi-day camps where costs can easily exceed original estimates. Leaders receive an alert when cumulative activity expenses reach 80 percent of the budget allocated, giving them time to either raise additional funds or scale back spending before the envelope is exhausted.
Bilingual Financial Communications to Families
Every financial interaction with families — fee invoices, payment confirmations, receipt requests, overdue notices — is delivered bilingually in Wampums. Each message is generated from a template that pulls the relevant financial data and renders it in the parent's preferred language. This means a francophone family receives their membership invoice in French while an anglophone family in the same group receives theirs in English, without the treasurer doing any extra work.
Payment receipts include a full breakdown of what was paid, the date, and the remaining balance if a payment plan is in use. Overdue notices are tactful and automatically include the outstanding amount, the due date, and a link to complete the payment online. Leaders can review all outgoing financial communications before they are dispatched, and a send history log provides an audit trail of every message sent to every family about financial matters.
