A free association system: what you get, and what it ends up costing

Free exists, and sometimes it is the answer

Several Danish providers offer free or freemium options, and a smaller association with a manageable membership, one dues rate and no shop can run itself on them for years. Choosing free is not a mistake, and it is not something a paid vendor should talk anybody out of when the sum looks like that.

What is worth doing is knowing the whole sum before you choose, rather than discovering it halfway through a season.

Where the price reappears

Transaction fees are the largest and the most overlooked. Somebody has to pay the dues, and the payment carries a fee per transaction whether or not the system is free. In an association with many small dues, the fees alone can exceed a subscription. That is the first figure to get on the table.

The hours are next. A free system typically covers the register and simple collection, but not the accounts, so the treasurer moves the amounts across by hand. That is not free, it is just not invoiced. A treasurer spending two hours a month reconciling spends a working week a year.

Then there are the things that have no price until they are missing: access control beyond a single administrator role, support when something breaks three days before the general assembly, and somewhere to put what has to be handled in confidence.

Work it out with your own numbers

Take the number of paying members times the number of collections per year. That is your transaction count. Multiply by the fee per transaction. That is the fixed cost free does not remove.

Add the hours the board spends on what the system does not do: transferring to the accounts, reconciling, updating member lists by hand, sending reminders manually. Put a value on them even though nobody is paid. Volunteer time is the association's scarcest resource, not its free one.

Hold that against a subscription. For a small association with simple needs, free still wins. For an association with several rates, a shop, real accounts and a board spending evenings on administration, it usually turns.

What we charge for, and what we do not

Medlemsplatformen is a paid system. There is no setup fee, the subscription follows the number of users, and modules switch on and off so you do not pay for the parts the association does not use. You can try all of it free for 60 days without committing.

What we do not do is hide the transaction fee inside a bundled price. It is stated separately, because it is the line that decides the sum for most associations, and because an offer that buries it cannot be compared with anything.

When paying is not worth it

If the association has under fifty members, one dues rate, no shop, no accounts beyond a bank statement, and a treasurer who thinks the system works, there is no argument for switching. A switch costs time however well it goes, and that time has to be earned back by something.

What usually turns the sum is not membership numbers alone. It is when the association takes on a different kind of task: several dues rates, a shop, accounts an auditor will look at, or board work that has grown large enough to need a place of its own.