Fee types group your products into categories. They trigger key system behaviors (like marking an account Paid) and drive your financial reporting, so every product needs the right one.
What Are Fee Types?
A fee type is a label that tells Member Splash how to handle a product, from updating payment status to grouping revenue in reports.
You choose a product's fee type in the Fee Type box when editing the product in Finances > Products.
Default Fee Types
Member Splash creates these fee types on every site:
Equity Fee: bond or capital improvement fees
Initiation Fee: one-time fees due on joining
Membership Fee: annual dues; the only fee type that sets payment status
Guest Fee: guest passes and day admissions
House Guest Fee: guests added to the account for part or all of a season
Late Payment Fee: fees for late payment
Online Processing Fee: processing fee for credit card payments
Discount: reductions applied to other fees
Balance Due: outstanding amounts
Credit: credits applied to the account
Reservation Fee: facility reservation fees
Sales Tax: internal line item for Gravity Forms tax charges
You can also add your own fee types (for example Parking Fee or Event Fee).
Fee Types with Special System Functions
Some fee types have built-in behavior. Using them correctly avoids setup problems. Each is identified by its slug, which stays the same even if you rename the fee type.
1) Membership Fee (slug membership-fee)
⚠️ IMPORTANT: This is the only fee type that changes an account's payment status from Unpaid to Paid.
When an account pays for any product with this fee type, it is marked Paid automatically.
Renaming it (for example "Annual Dues" or "Family Fee") keeps the slug
membership-fee, so it still works.No other fee type triggers this change, not even a new one named "Annual Dues".
An account can only buy one product with this fee type.
💡Common setup error: Clubs sometimes create a custom "Annual Dues" fee type instead of using Membership Fee. The system then doesn't recognize the payment and doesn't update the account's status.
2) House Guest Fee (slug house-guest-fee)
Use for nanny passes, grandparent passes, and other temporary seasonal additions.
Automatically adds the person named during purchase to the account, and removes anyone added this way at the end of each season.
You can assign several products to this fee type (for example a $75 Nanny Pass and a $125 Grandparent Pass).
Renaming it keeps the slug
house-guest-fee.
3) Guest Fee (slug guest-fee)
Automatically adds guest credits to the account when purchased. See How to Build a Guest Pass / Credit Product.
Renaming it (for example "Guest Passes") keeps the slug
guest-fee.
Configuration Requirements
Every product must have a fee type. If a product isn't billing correctly, first check that a fee type is selected. This is the most common cause of billing issues.
Fee Types and Accounting
Fee types categorize revenue so you can track where money comes from, produce accurate financial reports, analyze your revenue mix, and see the impact of discounts.
Sales reports such as Finances > Sales Summary can be filtered by fee type.
Example: putting all discount products under Discount shows how much revenue is reduced by promotions, early bird discounts, or member benefits.
Without correct fee types, your financial reports won't show a true picture of your club's revenue.