Markup fee structure for Square - Toastmasters membership dues

Toastmasters is an international organization whose sole purpose is to provide a forum for members to improve public speaking.

I joined a Toastmasters club in Kansas City, and was asked to help out by picking up the role of Treasurer.

Toastmasters is great. However, the online billing system still requires a few hoops for members to pay their dues. Only members with a leadership role have the ability to pay membership dues!

The way our club pays dues is as follows:

  1. Collect check from new/existing member
  2. Treasurer deposits check at bank (a non-profit business account)
  3. Treasurer logs into toastmasters.org and pays the fee for the member via a Debit card that the Treasurer handles
To save myself a few steps of running to the bank, I decided to make my life easier (and for members who never have checks on-hand) by linking up a Square account with our non-profit debit account.

Since Square charges a 2.75% fee for every transaction, it only seemed fair that those who decide to pay via debit/credit card should have that fee built in. Then, those who pay via check or cash still pay the same amount as before.

This led me to creating a spreadsheet! Low and behold, I wracked my brain and calculated what the markup percentage should be for Square’s 2.75% fee, and that came out to 2.828% respectively.

Depending on when a new member joins the club, they pay a pro-rated amount of the standard 6-month renewal fee.

TM Fees

This spreadsheet was all the convincing that was needed to ensure that those who chose to use Square and those who used Cash/Check, were paying the club the same amount. I also included a CEILING function to round up to the nearest whole cent, to avoid losing one cent on amounts that would normally round down. Again, gotta make sure the “convenience” fee is accurate!

Now, if Square or Toastmasters International changes their pricing structure, simply type in one number and voila, everything is recalculated.

Square is great, you can even put common purchase amounts into the application to make your job easier.

TM Fees iOS

So for a new member in September, just tap September ($7.72) and the “new member kit” ($20.57), swipe the card, and that’s it!

If you want to download the spreadsheet, here are some common formats:

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