By the end of this article, you'll be able to configure the non-seasonal settings that govern accounting basis, ledger display, credit card processing, invoicing, and automated emails across your entire Financial Admin system.
These settings apply across every season and every Financial Admin module — they're not something you'll revisit each year. Getting them right early means cleaner reports, fewer support calls about missing invoice details, and no surprises when your first credit card transaction comes through.
Complete your financial categories and line items before configuring these settings, since some options here — like ledger sort order — reference the structure you've already built.
In this article:
Choosing your accounting basis
Configuring how transactions display on the Person Record and financial ledgers
Setting up credit card processing, invoicing, and automated emails
Video Walkthrough
Accounting Basis
Navigate to Admin > Financial Admin, select a season from the top left, then click the Main Settings tab.
Choose Cash Basis or Accrual Basis.
Cash Basis (Default Setting): An Accounting method of reporting accounting transactions for revenue and expenses only when the corresponding cash is received or payments are made
Accrual Basis: An Accounting method that reports on revenues and expenses when they are incurred, regardless of when cash is exchanged.
📋Note: Cash Basis is the default, and most camps use it — if you're unsure which applies to you, check with your accountant before changing this.
General Settings
These control how financial information displays on the Person Record's Financial tab.
Check Show all transactions for all siblings in the family to view every sibling's transactions from a single camper's screen.
💡 Tip: This is the recommended setting — it reflects how most camps actually think about billing, as a family ledger rather than individual camper ledgers.
Alternatively, check Apply all transactions to campers to attribute transactions to individual campers instead of the family.
📋 Note: This is the less common configuration. It displays payments as linked to specific campers rather than the family as a whole.
Under Session Edit, choose the deposit notification alert you want to see after enrolling a camper in a session — this reminds you to collect payment at the time of enrollment.
Example:
Session Edit
In this section, you'll choose the type of alert you want to receive when editing sessions. This alert serves as a reminder of your selected deposit collection method.
Financial Ledgers
The Financial Ledgers setting allows you to determine the sort order of transactions on certain financial ledgers.
Sort By Transaction Amount - Highest to Lowest (Default): This setting will organize the families' financial ledger based on the amount of the transaction, from highest to lowest. Example: a tuition charge for $5500 would appear above a Equipment Rental Fee of $125.
Sort By Transaction Post Date: Earliest To Latest: This setting will use the post date - the day your added the transaction to the financial ledger- as the determining factor in your ledger sequence.
💡Tip: This is the most common option.
Sort By Transaction Effective Date - Earliest To Latest: This setting will use the effective date - the unique date you supply on the transaction to tell the system when to count the transaction towards the outstanding balance - as the determining factor in your ledger sequence.
Sort By Customer Ordering: This setting allows you to arrange your line items in your Financial set up in a specific sequence to help you customize your ledger. Making this selection will enable an "Arrange:" button on your non-seasonal line items page.
Residential Travel Line Items
In this section, you must decide the course of action to take when travel plans are canceled, whether initiated by the applicant through CampInTouch or by you through the camper record's lower half.
Do you want to automatically remove those specific line items, or do you intend to continue charging applicants for travel even if they are no longer using it? You have the option to determine these choices in this section.
Debit/Credit Cards
Next, you will establish your approach to handling credit card payments. During your initial training sessions, you will determine whether your camp will accept credit card payments, and if so, whether you will opt for manual card processing or prefer the automated processing offered through Campminder.
Your system is set up based on this decision, and the result will appear here. It will either indicate, "Your system is configured for credit card processing through Campminder," or "Your system is configured for manual credit card processing". To enable Campminder processing, please reach out to Campminder support.
If your system is configured to process credit cards through Campminder, you will see a few selection options.
Prohibition of credit card refunds: disabling this would require you to make refunds via your gateway.
Type of credit cards you will accept. You can then specifically name types of cards on your camper application.
Set up notifications for chargebacks or eCheck errors. Choose who should get these alerts and add any extra email addresses if needed.
Family Billing
Here, you can add an optional message for financial management.
Invoice
Next, you will configure your invoicing process. Invoicing refers to the invoices that will be sent to camper families.
There are several choices you need to make here, and our strong suggestion is to take the time to make sure you set up invoicing exactly the way you want it to be so that you can avoid problems down the road.
Choose an Invoice Format:
Standard: Use this if parents will pay online through CampInTouch.
Voucher: Adds a detachable payment slip to the bottom of the invoice for mailing payments back to camp.
Select an Invoice Header:
Print Banner: Prints your logo (from your original Campminder setup) at the top of the invoice.
Pick an Envelope Address format: Choose whether the address window on your envelope is on the left or right.
Optional Invoice Display Settings:
Show family charges below camper charges (rarely used, but helpful if charges are linked to a family account).
Show payments on the right side of the invoice.
Display enrolled sessions and their dates.
Print campers' nicknames for a personal touch.
Include campers' last names — highly recommended for clarity.
Enter the Voucher Remit Address:
Only needed if you're using the Voucher format.
Update this if your payment mailing address changes seasonally.
Customize Currency and Balance Description
Enter a different currency if not using USD.
Add an optional balance description (e.g., "Family Balance") — this language will only appear on non-installment invoices.
Return E-Mail Address
This return E-Mail address is required if your camp will be sending invoices by email and email notifications of credit card transactions.
Automated Emails
The Automated E-Mails section allows you to select various events related to credit card and eCheck processing for which you may wish to send an automated email to the client.
Select the event for which you wish to create an automated email from the dropdown menu. Click the box to enable this email.
Use the email editor to produce your automated email.
📖Related Help Materials:
Use the blue Preview button to see how your automated email will appear.