Questions and answers
Churches and congregations: questions, answered
Bindro takes sign-ups for church events — retreats, concerts, suppers, holiday clubs and classes — by household rather than by individual. A place can be priced pay-what-you-can inside a band the church publishes, a gift can be added on top with a tax receipt issued against the church's registered charity number, a guardian countersigns for every child from their own email before that child can be checked in, and the door works on a printed or offline name list in a hall with no signal. It costs 2.5% + $0.99 per paid place; free events cost nothing. Regular worship services are not ticketed and are out of scope.
Reviewed: 2026-08-09
What churches ask
How do I run a pay-what-you-can church event?
Publish a band and a suggested amount, and let each household choose inside it. You set a floor and a ceiling on the place — nothing to $50, say — and a suggested amount that the form fills in by default. The person signing up can accept it, type a different number inside the band, or, if your floor is zero, choose zero and still be signed up. Anything outside the band is refused on the money path with the band named, so the amount you are paid is always one you published.
How do churches register families rather than individuals?
One person signs the household up for however many places they need, and the names can come later. The order carries a household name, and each place becomes its own roster slot: the person who booked can fill the names in themselves from a link, or send a place to the person taking it so they fill in their own. A place nobody has named is not on the door list and a check-in attempt against it is refused, which is what stops "the Nolans, four places" turning into four unaccounted-for people.
How is volunteer safeguarding tracked for youth events?
Bindro records the declaration and the rota; it does not run the checks. The safeguarding requirement is blocking, so a booking cannot be taken until it is accepted, and the rota records which volunteer is on which shift at which event. Separately, every child on the order needs a guardian to countersign from their own email before that child can be admitted. What bindro does not do is verify a DBS or police check, or refuse a rota entry because one is missing — your safeguarding lead still owns clearance, and a rota entry grants no access to anything by itself.
What does church event registration cost?
2.5% + $0.99 per paid place, and nothing else. There is no monthly fee, no setup fee and no contract, and a free event costs nothing at all. A $45.00 retreat place carries $2.12 of fee, so a 60-place retreat taking $2,700.00 pays $127.20 in platform fees. Card processing is charged by the payment provider on top and is not marked up. A gift added on top of a sign-up carries no platform fee at all.
When does the church get paid after an event?
Two days after the event finishes, with nothing held back. Congregations sit in the low risk tier, so the reserve is zero and the full balance releases on T+2. Bindro never pays before delivery, in any vertical — paying out on an event that has not happened is how a cancelled retreat becomes a hole in a church budget and a hundred people with no refund.
Can people add a donation when they sign up?
Yes — there is a gift box on the sign-up form, and no platform fee is charged on the gift. The gift is tender added to the sale rather than a discount or a second ticket: the form names who receives it, the payment page shows it as its own line, and the confirmed order stores it apart from the price of the place so your reports never confuse "what the supper cost" with "what people gave".
Can we issue tax receipts for what people give?
Yes, once your registered charity number is on file — and nothing goes out before that. File the number in the console and a receipt is sent to the giver after each paid order, quoting the number and stating the gift as the deductible amount. The deductible figure is the gift alone, never the total: someone who paid $45 for a retreat place received $45 of retreat, and a receipt implying otherwise would invite them to claim relief they are not entitled to on a document that looks official. With no number on file the console tells you so rather than quietly sending nothing.
How do we get parental consent for children attending?
The guardian signs it themselves, from their own email, and the door refuses the child until they have. When a place is marked as being for someone under 18, the form asks for the guardian's own address, and a countersign request is raised in the same transaction that takes the money. Until it is signed, that child is left off the offline door list and a check-in is refused. A box ticked by the person booking is the booker's commitment, not the guardian's consent, and bindro treats those as two different things.
Can we have people sign a waiver for a youth trip or a work party?
Yes — the person signing up types their name as an electronic signature, and the acceptance is recorded against the order. Each accepted requirement stores the signer's name, the exact wording as it was shown, and a digest of that wording, so if you revise your terms next year you can still tell which version each household agreed to. The record is written inside the transaction that confirms the booking, so it exists for exactly the orders that actually went through.
How does check-in work in a hall with no wifi?
The door device downloads a name list before the event and works with no connection at all. Congregations check in by name rather than by scanning a code, so the manifest carries the names the door actually needs and nothing more. Scans made offline are replayed when the device gets signal, replaying twice counts once, and if two volunteers on two phones check the same person in, that surfaces in a conflict list rather than silently overwriting one of them. Re-entry is allowed, so somebody stepping out to move their car is not a problem.
Can we roster volunteers onto an event?
Yes — there is a rota, and today's shifts appear on the day-of page. Each shift is one person on one session with a role and a start and end time, and re-rostering somebody edits their shift rather than stacking a second one on top. A shift is a record of who is meant to be there; it grants no permission by itself, because access to your data comes from a person's role in the church office, never from being on a rota.
What can we show the church council or a grant funder?
A board report with quarterly activity, attendance, free places given, income taken from the ledger, and a breakdown by whatever the sign-up form asks — downloadable as a CSV to attach to a return. The income figures come from the double-entry ledger that the payouts settle against, not from a summary table written alongside it, which is why what the report says and what reached the bank agree. Free places are counted separately from paid ones, because a funder asking about reach is not asking about revenue.
Can we set a lower price for a whole household?
Yes — publish a household rate and the number of places it starts at, and the price is applied on the money path when the order qualifies. The rate is the church's, not the buyer's: the person signing up says how many places they need, and the price for that quantity is looked up server-side inside the confirming transaction. No form on any surface can send an amount and have it believed.
Can we take a sign-up from someone who paid by cash or cheque?
Yes — the office can enter a booking directly and record it as paid outside the platform. It goes through the same registration questions as a public sign-up, so an incomplete one is refused rather than half-created, and the payment is recorded for exactly the amount the server worked out. Free places for people who cannot pay can be issued the same way: they consume a real place and check in normally, but they write no income, so they never inflate what you report as taken.
Can attendees be asked to cover the platform fee?
Yes, and you can also absorb it or split it — it is a per-event choice. The fee itself does not change with the mode; only which side of the sale it comes from, and the payment page shows the household exactly which it is. For a pay-what-you-can event most churches absorb it, so the number a household chooses is the number they are asked for.
Can we run a weekly class or a course of evenings?
Yes — generate the series once and get one session per date, each with its own capacity. "Tuesdays at 7pm for eight weeks" becomes eight sessions with eight place counts in a single operation, and each one sells and checks in on its own. What congregations do not get is a course pass that buys the whole term in one purchase; class packs are not turned on for this vertical.
Who in the church office can see and do what?
Access comes from the role a person holds in your organisation, and nothing else. An owner, a treasurer, a manager, someone on the door, a volunteer and a read-only observer see different things, and hiding a link is never how that is enforced — every request is checked against the role again on the way in. A volunteer helping at one supper does not thereby get the giving history of the congregation.
Can we email everyone who came, afterwards?
Only the people who agreed to hear from you, and only after the event has actually happened. The opt-in is captured at sign-up and stored on the order; anyone who did not opt in is refused at the point the message would be queued rather than filtered out later by hand. A second run of the sweep never mails the same person twice.
Can we get our sign-up data out?
Yes — the data is yours and exports as a file you can open in a spreadsheet. Two categories never appear in an export or in any AI context: health information such as allergies and access needs, and anything belonging to a child. That exclusion is absolute and there is no setting that turns it off, in any vertical.
What attendees ask
How do I sign up my household for a church event?
Choose how many places your household needs and book them together in one go. You give your household name and your own details, and you can fill in who is coming either straight away or later from a link you are sent. If someone in the group wants to enter their own details — a teenager, a friend joining you — you can send the place to them and they fill it in themselves.
What if I cannot afford to give?
Choose the lowest amount the church has published, including nothing if their band starts at zero, and sign up exactly as everyone else does. Nobody at the church is shown a list of who chose what as they arrive; the door has a name list, not a price list. If money is the only thing standing between you and coming, contact the church office — that is a conversation with a person, not a setting on a form.
My child is going without me. What do I have to do?
Watch for an email addressed to you and sign the consent from your own link. Whoever books gives your address as the parent or guardian, and you receive your own link to sign — a box ticked on your behalf by somebody else does not count. Until you sign, your child is not on the list at the door and will not be admitted, so it is worth doing when the email arrives rather than on the morning.
Is what I tell you about allergies or access needs kept private?
Yes — allergies, dietary needs and access requirements are held as health information and treated differently from the rest of your booking. They are excluded from data exports and from any AI feature, without exception and without a setting that changes it. They reach the people running the event so that you are fed safely and can get in the building, and they go no further.
Do I need to print anything or show a code at the door?
No — church events check in by name. Someone on the door has your household on a list, on a device that works whether or not the hall has signal, and ticks you off. If you step outside during the evening you can come back in; re-entry is normal for this kind of event and is not treated as a second arrival.
Can I get a receipt for the amount I gave?
If the church has filed its registered charity number, a receipt is emailed to you after you book. It quotes the charity number and states the gift you added as the deductible amount — not the whole total, because the part you paid for your place bought you a place. If you gave nothing on top of the price, there is nothing deductible and no receipt is sent.
Can I change or cancel our places?
Your confirmation email carries a link to your own booking, and the church office can always help. From the link you can see the booking and, within the window the church allows and before the event starts, request a refund. After that window the office can still refund you — it is their decision rather than an automatic one, which for a church event is usually the right way round.
I said I could help. What happens next?
Someone from the church contacts you — ticking the box is an offer, not a shift. The box tells the office you are willing; the rota is built by a person who knows what help is needed and what checks a role requires. If the event involves children, expect that conversation to include safeguarding, because helping with a holiday club is not the same as helping with a supper.
What happens if the event is cancelled?
The church refunds you, and no money has been paid out to them in the meantime. Funds only reach a church two days after an event has actually taken place, which is the point: money for an event that never happened is still there to be given back. Refunds return to the card you paid with.
What does bindro NOT do for a church?
A capability this vertical does not declare is refused by the engine rather than quietly missing, so it is listed here rather than left to be discovered.
- Running background checks on volunteers. Bindro collects the safeguarding declaration before checkout and records who is rostered to which shift; it does not run DBS, police or reference checks, and it does not refuse a rota entry because a check is missing. That part stays with your safeguarding lead.
- Regular worship services. They are not ticketed, and this vertical deliberately excludes them — bindro has nothing useful to say about a Sunday morning.
- Recurring giving, standing orders and annual giving statements. Subscriptions are not resolved for congregations, and payouts settle per delivered event, so money taken outside an event would have nothing to settle against. It is off on purpose.
- Being a church management system. There is no membership database, no pastoral records, no worship-service planning and no Sunday attendance tracking. Bindro handles the event and hands you the data.
- Waitlists. When an event is fully booked it is fully booked — there is no queue that promotes people automatically when someone drops out.
- Membership-verified pricing. Member and non-member prices exist as a pricing model, but checking someone against a membership roster is not enabled for congregations, so a member price here is a published price rather than a verified entitlement.
- Multi-day retreat agendas where each person picks their own sessions, class packs, document upload, add-on merchandise, invoicing a partner organisation, gift cards, season passes and sales tax. All configured as optional for congregations and none currently turned on — a direct call to any of them is refused, not quietly ignored.
What else should I read?
Churches and congregations: the overview
Pay-what-you-can sign-ups, by household, with safeguarding built in.
bindro vs Planning Center
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
bindro vs Tithe.ly
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bindro vs TicketSpice
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
How to run a pay-what-you-can church event without wrecking the budget
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
How to take church event sign-ups by household instead of by person
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
Safeguarding and consent for church youth events: what software can and cannot do
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
Running the door at a church event in a hall with no signal
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
What to put in front of the church council or a grant funder after an event
Reviewed 2026-08-09.
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