Ashford AC Membership System 

Help and Guidance

A few basics about the website

You can use the system to update your personal details, renew your club membership and top up your account so that you don’t need to pay cash on training evenings. The system is web based and the home page is: https://www.ashfordathleticclub.org.uk.

First and most important thing: Please make sure that your email app knows about emails from ashfordathleticclub.org.uk and ashfordac.org.uk so that they don't end up in your spam or junk folders.

First Time Access

When you want to access the members only part of the website for the first time, you will need to generate a password. To do this, you must go through the same procedure that you would use if you have forgotten your password:

  • Go to the Log In page
  • At the foot of the page, click on the Forgotten Password? button. This will take you to the Reset Password Page
  • From there, please follow the instructions. The email address you should use is the one that we have registered for you as Account Holder (see Update Your Details (below) for a description of what Account Holder means). Whenever we send you an email, it will go to the Account Holder email address and this is the one you should use to Log In with
  • When you have generated your password, please make a note of it.

Once you have generated your password, please return to the Log In page. Enter your email address and new password. When the system has validated your Log In details, a welcome message will be displayed at the top right of the page underneath the black navigation bar.

Subscription prices

Whether or not you have logged in to your account you will be able to click/tap on this link which takes you to the Membership page which has a list of our current subscription rates.

Member Only Options

There are 3 of these which will appear on the black navigation bar at the top of the page after you have successfully logged in. Other options may be added later. The options are:

  • Account top-up - Use this link when you want to top-up the account that you use for training fees and so on
  • Renew Membership - Use this link when you want to renew your membership
  • Update Your Details - Use this to update your personal detail or the details of members for whom you are the responsible adult and to check your account balance. You will also be able to view your original AAC application form if you have joined the club since this system went live.

Account top-up

This page allows you to top-up your account online. The minimum top-up amount is currently set to £28.00. See below for a fuller description.

Renew Membership

If there is a pending renewal (or renewals for a group/family membership), a table is displayed showing the cost of each individual renewal plus a breakdown explaining how the total cost is arrived at. In some cases, you may also be able to order a training vest if required (Note: Training vest where offered is optional). If there is no pending renewal, a message is displayed.

When you are happy that the renewal details are correct, please click on the tick box to confirm that you have read our code of practice. Click the Next button.  A summary of the cost of the renewal is displayed. Click on the Purchase button. This will take you to PayPal for payment. See below for a few words about payment using PayPal.

Update Your Details

Each member has his or her own account.  Normally the account will be in the member’s name, which means that the Account Holder and the Member will be the same person!  If the member was under 18 on 1st September last, then the Account Holder must be a responsible adult – normally a parent - but can also be a guardian or any adult who is 18 or over.  When a member turns 18, he or she can then have their own account if desired, but this is not compulsory. An account may contain multiple athletes for whom an adult is responsible so far as Ashford AC club matters are concerned.

There are 2 boxes on the page, the first of these (pink) contains the Manage Your Account button. Click here to manage your account details and to view your Account History.
The second box contains one or more buttons which allow you to click through to update Member Details. Normally there will be only one button, but if there is more than one member on the account, there will be one button per member. The button shows the member’s name.

Below the boxes is a form which can be used to update the account holder’s details including contact details.  The email address here is the one that will mainly be used for contacting you and is the one which you should use as your log in id for the site.  You can change it if you want - but remember that this will also change your log in id as well.

A note about Contact Details; most of the contact will be by email so by not ticking the Email box, you may miss some things of interest. Note also, that regardless of what contact preferences you choose, you will continue to get emails such as payment confirmations, top-up reminders and so on.

Manage Your account

We don't hold details of credit cards, debit cards, bank accounts or PayPal accounts on our database.

In this context, an account has two purposes:

  • A way for you you to see the transactions which have taken place against your account, e.g. renewal payments, top-up credits, training night fees etc. Click on the View Account History button to see the transactions which are presented in reverse date order (i.e. latest first)
  • The account can be loaded with credits which can be used for paying training night fees (and possibly other things eventually). The idea of this is to relieve you of the need to bring cash on training nights. The account can be topped up via PayPal and will be automatically debited when you are signed in. If you want to be informed when the account balance falls below a value that you specify, you will receive an email from us, otherwise we will let you know when the account balance falls to 0. The minimum top-up level is set to £28.00. This is approximately enough for one athlete attending two training nights per week for a month.

There are two buttons on this page:

  • Top-Up Your Account - Add credits to your account. Minimum top-up amount is £28.00
  • View Account History – See a list of transactions that have taken place on your account. The list is presented in reverse date order (latest first).

Underneath the buttons is a small form which allows you to set your own notification limit if you wish to be notified when the account balance drops below the value you specify. If you leave it at 0, you will receive a notification when the balance drops below 0.

Member Details

This page is a form which you can use to change your member details. It includes fields to notify any medical conditions that the club should know about and also emergency contact names and numbers. Both of these are important and should be completed if they have not been. Please keep this up to date.

If the Last Renewal Date is not showing as 1st Jan 2024, then your membership needs to be renewed. If it is showing as 1st Jan 2024, then your membership is up to date and does not need to be renewed.

PayPal

We are using PayPal as our credit/debit card processor principally because their commission charges are very competitive and because they take care of all the complicated legal and regulatory compliance issues which taking payments online throws up. If you have a personal PayPal account, you can use it to pay Ashford AC if you wish, but you are not obliged to have a PayPal account to use PayPal to pay us by credit/debit card.

When the website sends you to PayPal, the first page you will see is in fact a Log In page so that you can log into your PayPal account if you so wish. Underneath the PayPal log in form you should see a button with wording similar to: Pay By Debit or Credit Card. If you want to pay by card, click on this button and leave all the PayPal log in fields blank. If you don't see the 'Pay By Debit or Credit Card' button, click on the 'Cancel and return to Ashford Athletic Club' link which will cancel the transaction and return you to our site. Try again!  The 'Pay By Debit or Credit Card' should appear next time.  This happens because PayPal wants you to open an account with them and are sometimes less than helpful when guiding payers through the process.

When you have made your payment, click on the Return to Merchant button which will bring back to the Thank You page on our site.