--- title: "How to Manage Junior Members and Parents: Accounts, Consent and Payments | SportyPlus" description: "How to manage junior members at a sports club so that parents can book, sign up and pay for their children, under-16s are signed up with a parent's consent, and family memberships cover the people they are meant to." lang: "da" canonical: "https://www.sporty.plus/da/blog/manage-junior-members-and-parents" --- 1. [Forside](https://www.sporty.plus/da) 3. [Blog](https://www.sporty.plus/da/blog) 5. How to Manage Junior Members and Their Parents at a Sports Club ![How to Manage Junior Members and Their Parents at a Sports Club](https://www.sporty.plus/_og/r/blog/manage-junior-members-and-parents.png) # How to Manage Junior Members and Their Parents at a Sports Club How to manage junior members at a sports club so that parents can book, sign up and pay for their children, under-16s are signed up with a parent's consent, and family memberships cover the people they are meant to. To manage junior members well, give every child their own record in the club's system and link it to the parent who is responsible for them. The parent signs in as themselves and books, signs up and pays on the child's behalf. A child old enough to have their own login can still use it. Children under the age of digital consent are only registered once a parent has approved. That sounds obvious, but it is not how most clubs work. Juniors usually exist in one of three ways: as a line on the parent's account, as a second account sharing the parent's email and password, or only on the coach's spreadsheet. Each of those breaks down at some point: the invoice, the tournament entry, the medical certificate, or the day the child turns 14 and wants to book courts themselves. ## Why junior members are hard to manage A junior member is two people as far as the club is concerned. The **child** is the one who plays, attends training, enters tournaments and needs a medical certificate. The **parent** is the one who reads the emails, pays the fees, signs the forms and calls the office when something goes wrong. Most club systems were built around one person per account, so clubs force juniors into one of these workarounds: - **The parent's account stands in for the child.** The booking says "Ana Horvat" when it was her son on court. Attendance, results and rankings end up under the wrong person. - **The child has an account with the parent's details.** Two accounts share one email address (or the system refuses the second one), and the password gets passed around the family. The parent signs in _as the child_ to pay, so the club's records say the child paid. - **The child has a real account and the parent has nothing.** Reminders go to a 12-year-old's inbox, or nowhere at all, and the parent hears about an unpaid term fee from the coach. Then families make it harder. A child has two parents, possibly in two households. A family has three children in the academy. A couple wants one family membership for themselves and the kids. A teenager plays in a league and their parent wants to see the fixtures. ## How clubs usually handle it Most clubs patch it by hand. The office keeps a separate list of parent phone numbers. Academy fees are invoiced to whoever the coach remembers. Family memberships are a discount someone applies manually, with nothing checking that the "family" is actually a family or that the four-person plan covers four people and not six. Registration of children is usually not checked at all. An online sign-up form takes a date of birth if it asks for one, and a 10-year-old can create an account like anyone else. This works while the junior section is small and the same person runs it every year. It stops working when the academy grows, when a second coach starts, or when someone asks the club what personal data it holds on a child and on whose authority. ## A better structure: children, guardians and family The structure that holds up has four parts. ### 1\. Every child has their own profile The child is a member in their own right: name, date of birth, their own memberships, bookings, results and documents. What varies is whether they can sign in. - A **managed child** has no email and no login. A parent runs the profile completely. This is right for younger children. - A child with **their own login** can book and sign up for themselves. Their parent stays linked and keeps the same rights. Moving from one to the other should be one step: add an email to the managed profile, and the child sets a password. ### 2\. Parents are linked to children, not stored on them A **guardian link** connects two accounts: this adult is responsible for this child. A child can have two guardians; a parent can have several children. The link, not a shared login, is what lets the parent: - book courts and lessons for the child, - sign the child up for events, camps and competitions, - see the child's invoices and pay them, - see the child's academy record: groups, attendance, progress, - receive copies of the child's booking, payment and competition notifications. Two rules keep the link honest. First, **linking an existing account needs the other person's agreement**. If a parent names an account that already exists, its holder gets a request and has to accept it, signed in as that account. Otherwise anyone could make themselves someone's "parent" and read their data. Second, **a staff member should only be able to link members of their own club**, and changing one club's family records should not touch another club's. ### 3\. Under-16s sign up with a parent's consent In the EU, GDPR Article 8 sets an age below which an online service relying on consent needs a parent's authorisation. Member states choose that age between 13 and 16; in Croatia, for example, it is 16 (see the [age of digital consent in every EU country](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/age-of-digital-consent-by-country)). Whatever your legal basis for each piece of data, a sign-up flow that a child can complete alone, with no one checking their age, is hard to defend. (This article is not legal advice. Check the rules for your country and your own use of the data.) A sign-up flow that handles this properly: 1. Asks every new member for a date of birth. 2. If they are old enough, nothing changes. 3. If they are younger, asks for a parent's email. The account is created but **cannot sign in yet**, and the parent receives a consent request. 4. The parent opens the request, signs in or registers as themselves, and approves. Only then does the child's account work, and the club keeps a record of who consented and when. A parent who adds their own child from their own account has consented by doing so, so that link is active at once. Members who sign up through Google, Apple or another social login often never type a birth date. For them, the system should ask for one on first sign-in, before anything else. Accounts the club creates itself, such as a coach entering a new academy student from the office, are a different situation: the club is collecting the data and answers for it directly. ### 4\. The order says who it is for and who paid Payments are where most junior setups fail. Fix them by recording three things separately: - **who the order belongs to**: the child whose academy term it is, - **who it is for**: on each item, which family member gets the membership, ticket or entry, - **who paid**: the parent who actually put in the card. Once those are separate, a parent can pay their child's open academy invoice while signed in as themselves, the membership lands on the child's profile, and the parent can choose whose name the invoice is made out to. That matters to parents claiming childcare or sports expenses, and to companies reimbursing an employee. **Family memberships** work the same way. A member's family is themselves, their children and their partner. A family plan covering four people lets the buyer pick up to three others from that family, and each person gets their own membership, all grouped under the holder. The plan's size is enforced at checkout, not on trust. ## A worked example _This is a hypothetical club, used to show how the pieces fit together._ A tennis and padel club has 60 juniors in its academy. Two families illustrate most of the cases: **The Kovač family.** Petra (41) and Ivan (43) have Luka (14) and Mia (8). Petra adds both children from her account. Mia has no email, so she becomes a managed profile. Luka gets his own email so he can book practice courts. Petra links Ivan as her partner; he accepts the request from his inbox. Then she buys the club's four-person family membership, marks herself as the holder and adds Ivan, Luka and Mia. Four memberships are created in one family group. Luka books a court on Thursday. The booking is his, and Petra also receives the confirmation. **The Babić family.** Nora (12) signs up on the club website herself after a school taster session. She enters her birth date, the sign-up asks for a parent's email, and she gives her father's. Her account exists but cannot sign in. Her father gets the consent request that evening, registers, and approves. Now Nora is linked to him, and the club's record shows when he consented. When the academy issues Nora's autumn term order, her father sees it under his family page, pays it with his own card and chooses to have the invoice in his name, with Nora named on the line. Nobody shares a password, the office has entered no phone numbers by hand, and every booking, membership and invoice is under the right person. ## How SportyPlus handles junior members SportyPlus has this structure built in. Signed-in members have a **My family** page on the club website and in the member app. There they add a child (with or without an email), link an existing account, link a partner, accept or decline requests, edit a managed child's details, and see and pay their children's open orders. At checkout, each item has a **For** field to choose the family member it is for. A family [membership plan](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/memberships) adds an **Also covers** field limited to the plan's size. When a parent pays a child's order, they choose whose name goes on the invoice. Self sign-up asks for a date of birth, and accounts under 16 wait for a parent's approval before they can sign in, with the consent recorded on the link. Guardians receive copies of their child's booking, payment and competition notifications. They can follow the child's [academy record](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/school) and hand in the child's medical documents. Club staff see the family on the member and academy student pages. Consent requests and link requests are ordinary club email templates, so each club can word them in its own voice. One account works at every SportyPlus club, so a family that plays at two clubs links once. ## Practical recommendations - **Give every junior their own record.** Even a six-year-old. Their attendance, results and medical certificate belong to them, not to their parent. - **Stop sharing logins.** If parents currently sign in as their children to pay, that is the first thing to fix. It puts the child's name on the payment and gives the parent the child's password. - **Ask for a date of birth at every sign-up.** You cannot apply an age rule to data you never collected. - **Make linking two-sided.** A parent adding their own child is fine. Claiming an existing account should need that account's agreement. - **Decide whose name goes on invoices before the term starts.** Tell parents they can choose, and stop reissuing invoices by hand. - **Enforce family membership sizes.** If the plan says four people, the system should count four. - **Tidy up unconsented accounts.** An under-16 account whose parent never approves should not sit in your database forever. Delete it after a fixed period. SportyPlus does this after 30 days. - **Copy parents on what matters, not on everything.** Booking confirmations, payment reminders and competition entries, yes. Club newsletters stay with the [opt-ins each member chose](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/sports-club-email-newsletter). ## Related questions ### Can a child have two parents linked? Yes, and they should. Separated parents often both need to book and pay. Each guardian is a separate link with the same rights, and either can be removed without affecting the other. ### Can a child remove their parent? A child above the consent age can remove a guardian link from their own account, as either side of a link can. A child under the consent age cannot, because the parent's consent is what lets the account exist. ### What happens when a managed child grows up? Add an email to their profile. They use "forgot password" to set their own login, and everything already on the profile stays: memberships, results, history. The parent stays linked. ### Does a partner see my bookings and invoices? Not in SportyPlus. A partner link lets two adults buy for each other and share a family membership; it does not give either of them access to the other's account, the way a guardian has access to a child's. ### Does a coach registering a junior need parental consent first? A coach or office registering a junior from the admin side is the club collecting the data directly, so the self sign-up gate does not apply. The club is still responsible for having a lawful basis, usually the membership agreement the parent signs. ## Related SportyPlus guides - [How to manage court bookings without spreadsheets and manual work](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/court-booking-management): booking rules per member type, including juniors. - [How to run a sports club email newsletter](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/sports-club-email-newsletter): consent and opt-ins for club news and promotions. - [Age of digital consent by country](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/age-of-digital-consent-by-country): the under-16 rule, country by country, and what it covers. - [How to handle refunds for cancelled court bookings automatically](https://www.sporty.plus/blog/automatic-refunds-court-bookings): what happens to the payment when a junior's booking is cancelled. Ready to give parents their own accounts and stop sharing logins? [Run junior memberships, academy fees and family plans with SportyPlus](https://www.sporty.plus/modules/memberships). ## Relaterede SportyPlus-guides - [How to Run a Sports Club Email Newsletter: Club News, Offers and Opt-Ins](https://www.sporty.plus/da/blog/sports-club-email-newsletter) Most clubs send one undifferentiated "club email". That is why members unsubscribe from everything after one sale. Split news from promotions and both get read. - [How to Manage Court Bookings Without Spreadsheets, Messages and Manual Work](https://www.sporty.plus/da/blog/court-booking-management) A complete guide to replacing spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups and manual scheduling with booking rules the system enforces on its own. - [How to Handle Refunds for Cancelled Court Bookings Automatically](https://www.sporty.plus/da/blog/automatic-refunds-court-bookings) A clear cancellation rule plus an automatic club wallet credit removes one repetitive task from every cancellation. - [Age of Digital Consent by Country: What Sports Clubs Need to Know](https://www.sporty.plus/da/blog/age-of-digital-consent-by-country) The GDPR age of digital consent is 13, 14, 15 or 16 depending on the country. Here is the full table, what the rule does and does not cover for a club, and how to handle a 12-year-old signing up online.