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Your dues model is how your congregation decides what a household owes. Set it in Settings, then Dues and billing.

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The four models

Fixed. Every household owes the same amount. Simple, predictable, and easy to explain. Fair Share. The amount depends on the size of the household, using brackets you define. A single person pays less than a family of four. Tiered. You offer membership levels and households choose one. Voluntary. There is no set amount. Households pledge what they can. Increasingly common among congregations moving away from fixed dues.

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What changes when you choose Voluntary

Voluntary is not just Fixed with a blank amount. The language and the behaviour change:
  • The feature is called Sustaining Pledges rather than Dues
  • The amount is a Pledge Amount rather than an Amount Due
  • A pledge is never marked Overdue, because a self-set commitment cannot be late
  • An unpaid pledge shows as Open rather than Unpaid
This follows from what a voluntary model means. Chasing someone for being late on a gift they defined themselves would undercut the whole point.

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How Fair Share brackets work

Fair Share brackets are defined by the smallest household size each one covers, and the highest applicable bracket wins. So if you define brackets at 1 adult, 2 adults, and 3 adults, a household with four adults falls into the 3-adult bracket, because it is the highest bracket that applies. Your top bracket is open-ended by design, which means a household can never fall off the top of your list.
Brackets count active adults. A member recorded with the family role of Child does not count, and neither does a member marked Inactive, Deceased, or Archived.If a household’s suggested amount looks wrong, check the family roles and statuses on its members first. That is nearly always the cause.
You do not have to define a bracket for every size. Gaps are fine, because the highest applicable bracket is used.

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Switching models

You can change model at any time, and switching does not lose anything. Each model keeps its own amounts separately. If you have Fixed set up at one amount, try Fair Share for a season, and go back, your Fixed amount is still there. You never retype numbers to undo an experiment. You can also save a half-finished setup. Choosing a model before you have worked out the amounts is a normal state, not an error.
Switching models does not rewrite commitments already recorded. A household committed to a specific amount stays committed to that amount. The model decides what is suggested for new commitments, not what is already agreed.

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Per-household adjustments

Whatever the model, you can set any household’s commitment to a different amount. The model gives you the default and you override it where you need to. That is how you handle the cases every congregation has: a family in difficulty, a founding member with an arrangement, a student rate. Set the amount to zero for a full waiver. A zero commitment counts as satisfied and never appears as owing. See Commitments.