Page 22 - ABF Newsletter August 2024

MYABF UPDATE with Julian Foster
julian.foster@abf.com.au
Latest Release: Congress improvements
The latest MYABF release went live in late June and saw some big changes to the congress area.
The first two are pertinent to both players and tour- nament organisers:
• Entry fees are now created and listed per player not per entry – this now better reflects how most people pay (prior to MYABF most entries were paid for by one person and players settled up between them – which can still be done of course if you prefer).
• Players and organisers can now recalculate entry fees for teams of five or six to spread the entry fee across all players (provided no one has already made a payment whereupon it becomes too messy and you will need to ask the organis- er to change it manually).
In addition, tournament organisers can now:
• List events with different entry fees for club members and non-members (already available for club sessions but not previously for calendar listed events).
• List events that are limited to club members only.
• More easily remove players from entries with more than four players.
Next Release:
Full club membership management
costs that Stripe (the company which processes the online card payments) have charged us.
There is a common misconception that this is a ser- vice fee charged by the ABF, to the clubs, for use of MYABF. This is factually incorrect!
Let us delve into what happens in the background: 1. A player puts money into their bridge credits
account (say $100).
• The player gets bridge credits for $100 and isn’t charged any fee.
• ABF gets paid by Stripe but receives $100 minus the Stripe transaction fees.
2. The player spends the 100 bridge credits on con- gress entries or club sessions.
• The $100 moves from the player account to one or more club accounts.
3. Periodically (the timing varies for sessions and congresses) the ABF closes the loop and settles the funds, minus 2%, which it never received to begin with.
Note:
Whilst the ABF aims to “break even” when recover- ing transaction costs we have in fact incurred more costs than we have received. There are three main reasons for this:
• Payments to clubs don’t “settle” themselves. Time is spent by ABF staff every month calculat- ing the settlement payments, making the pay- ments as well as reconciling the account totals to ensure everything balances.
• Any additional credit card fees charged by Stripe (e.g. higher fees on International cards) are currently fully paid for by the ABF. Resulting in a negative financial result to the ABF!
• Refunds to players cost the ABF money. Stripe don’t charge extra fees but they don’t return ones already paid – so those are lost because the money never moves to a club account to be later settled. This is why we ask that players do not request card refunds unless they are genu- inely not able to use the credits in their account for a reasonable period of time. Please don’t do
The next major release (due in October 2024) is aimed at giving clubs the ability to fully manage their membership list through MYABF. This will extent current club administration features to track who is paid up to what date and allow membership renew- als to be processed (with the option for players to pay via bridge credits).
Clarifying Stripe fees and the ABF’s 2% charge
This section provides some more detail behind the comments made in David Fryda’s article this month.
When the ABF passes event money that we have col- lected on behalf of clubs back to them, 2% is with- held. This charge is an attempt to recoup transaction
Page: 22
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: August 2024