Collecting Fees and Settling Up

Money is one of the trickiest parts of organizing a golf outing. Squabbit keeps everything in one place so you can collect registration fees, split a cart or dinner bill, pay out purses, and settle up side bets without spreadsheets or chasing people down. This guide walks through it from both the organizer’s and the player’s side.

The Fees tab and Balances view

Admins manage all of this from the Fees and payments screen, which you reach by tapping the registration fee tile in your tournament settings. It has two chips at the top:

• Setup — where you configure the group currency, payout mode, payment options, and the registration fees themselves.
• Balances — a live list of every participant and what they owe or are owed, plus a running summary of how much you’ve collected and paid out.

Players don’t need the Fees tab. Each player sees their own receipt when they register, and again any time they tap View Registration. That receipt itemizes their fees, buy-ins, expense shares, winnings, and what’s left to pay or collect.

Setting up payment methods

Before anyone can pay you, add at least one payment option. On the Setup chip, find the Payment options section and tap Add payment method. Squabbit groups the choices into two kinds:

• Auto verified — a Credit card option processed through Stripe. Squabbit confirms these payments automatically: when a player pays by card, the money is processed through Stripe and their balance updates instantly, with no manual confirmation needed. Setting it up connects (or reuses) your Stripe account.
• Manual verification — handles for paying outside the app, like Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, or a Custom method. Squabbit can’t see the money move, so whoever gets paid has to confirm they received it before a balance updates.

Once you’ve added a method, you can turn on Require payment to register so players have to pay their fee before their registration completes. This option only appears when self-registration is enabled and you have at least one payment method.

Your personal payment methods

There’s a second, separate place to set up payments: your own profile. These are personal handles (Venmo, Zelle, and so on) that other players use to pay you directly when you settle up peer-to-peer. When you add a payment method to a group, Squabbit also offers to save it to your profile for one-tap reuse later. If you win a purse or front an expense in a group that settles peer-to-peer and you haven’t added a personal method yet, Squabbit nudges you to add one so others know how to pay you.

Where fees come from

Each player’s receipt is built up automatically from everything they’re on the hook for:

• Registration fees — whatever entry fees you defined for the tournament.
• Format purses — buy-ins for games like Skins, with the winnings credited back as a separate line.
• Hole competitions — buy-ins for closest-to-the-pin, longest drive, and similar pots.
• Side games — buy-ins for scorecard side bets (more on those below).
• Expenses — each player’s share of any shared costs you split.

The receipt totals all of these into a single balance, then subtracts any payments already made to land on a Remaining balance. When a player registers and chooses to pay, the amount shown on the Register button is exactly this host-routed total, including any card fees they’re covering. If your group doesn’t require payment up front, players can choose Pay now or Pay later and settle whenever they like.

Adding and splitting shared expenses

Beyond entry fees, real outings rack up shared costs: carts, range balls, a group dinner. Add these as expenses so they flow into everyone’s balance.

To add one, tap Add expense and fill in:

• Title, Amount, Category (Food, Lodging, Transport, Course fees, or Other), and an optional description and date.
• Paid by — the person who fronted the money.
• Split mode — Split equally divides the amount evenly across everyone you include, or choose Custom to set each person’s share by hand.

Once saved, the person who paid is credited for fronting the cost and everyone in the split is charged their share. The math lands on each player’s receipt automatically and feeds into the settlement below.

How balances are computed

Squabbit nets everything together. For each player it adds up their fees, buy-ins, and expense shares (what they owe) and subtracts their winnings and anything they fronted (what they’re owed). The result is a single number per person: positive means they still owe, negative means they’re owed money back.

On the Balances list, each player’s card shows that number as Owes, Is owed, or All square. You can search by name and sort the list (for example, by who owes the most). Tap a card to expand the full receipt breakdown. When everyone is settled, the list simply reads “Everyone’s all settled up.”

Payout mode: route through host vs. simplify debts

How those balances turn into actual payments depends on the Payout mode you pick in Setup:

• Route through host — every player pays the host, and the host pays out every winner. For example, if Bob owes $20 in entry fees and Carl wins a $20 purse, Bob pays the host $20 and the host pays Carl $20.
• Simplify debts — Squabbit combines debts and lets players pay each other directly to cut down the number of transactions. In the same example, Bob just pays Carl $20 directly: one payment instead of two.

In Route-through-host mode, the Balances summary card shows two progress meters, Collected and Distributed, plus a projected surplus and counts of who’s registered, paid in full, and outstanding. In Simplify-debts mode the host isn’t the middleman, so that treasury summary is hidden and the player cards carry the detail instead.

Paying and receiving

On a player’s expanded receipt, open balances appear under two headers: Receive (money owed to them) and Pay (money they owe). Each row names the other party and shows the amount, with an action button:

• Pay — if you’re the one who owes, tap Pay. Squabbit shows the other party’s payment methods (or routes you to card checkout for a host payment). For a manual method it shows the how-to-pay details and a confirm; once you tap to confirm you’ve paid, it records the payment and notifies the recipient.
• Receive / Collect — if you’re owed, you can send a payment Request that notifies the other person, or Mark as paid if you already got the money outside the app.

A manual payment sits as a pending claim until the recipient confirms it. While it’s pending you’ll see a status pill (for example “Awaiting confirmation”), and the recipient can tap it to confirm. Card payments through Stripe confirm automatically. Once a payment is confirmed it shows a green Paid badge and the balance updates.

Settling side-game bets from the scorecard

Side bets played during a round live on the scorecard, not in the tournament fees. After a round with side games, open the side-game payouts view. It has two tabs:

• Results — a card per bet (and per press) showing who won and by how much.
• Summary — each player’s net Won / Lost for the round, with the same Receive and Pay settlement rows.

Squabbit minimizes the number of payments needed, then gives each player Pay and Collect buttons that work exactly like the group flow: pay through a saved method or confirm an outside payment, request money you’re owed, or mark a debt as paid. Because side-game settlement is scorecard-based, it works in casual social rounds too, not just tournaments, and notifies the other player to confirm.

That’s it!

Set up a payment method, decide whether fees route through you or settle player-to-player, add any shared expenses, and let Squabbit do the math. Players pay and confirm from their own receipts, and your Balances view always shows exactly where things stand. If you get stuck or want to suggest an improvement, use the Help menu in the app.