Fees and caps

UnitTally charges a fee only on online card transactions. Cash, check, or any other manual payment method costs $0 in UnitTally fees, on every tier, always.

Every online card transaction is priced the same way:

fee = min($0.30 + subtotal × rate, cap)

The flat $0.30 and the rate apply first. The cap is a ceiling, and most transactions never reach it.

Manual payments are $0 on all three tiers. The table above applies only to the online card path.

A $30 sale, Free tier. UnitTally’s fee is $0.30 + ($30 × 0.025) = $1.05. Stripe’s own processing fee, at its standard published rate of roughly 2.9% + $0.30, is a separate charge of about $1.17. That number is Stripe’s, not UnitTally’s, and it changes if Stripe changes its pricing. Combined, that’s roughly $2.22 in fees on a $30 sale, so $28 of every $30 stays with the organization on the free tier.

A $1,000 sponsorship, Free tier. The linear formula would be $0.30 + ($1,000 × 0.025) = $25.30, but the $20 cap engages, so the actual UnitTally fee is $20, not $25.30. That’s what “$20 max, even on a $1,000 sponsorship” means. Once a sale gets big, the platform fee stops scaling with it.

The cap only matters once the linear part of the formula would exceed it. Solving for the subtotal where that happens:

Below those subtotals, the fee is the flat $0.30 plus the percentage, and the cap doesn’t come into it. Above them, the fee stays at the cap no matter how large the sale gets.

On the online card path, a transaction has two distinct fees, not one combined number:

• UnitTally’s platform fee, the tier fee from the table above.
• Stripe’s processing fee, set by Stripe, not UnitTally, and uncapped. It keeps scaling with the sale price even after UnitTally’s fee hits its cap.

The cap applies to the UnitTally fee only. It does not cap what Stripe charges to move the card transaction. See Payment methods for how the two charges flow through Stripe Connect.

A free transaction (a Free Grant) waives UnitTally’s platform fee on one online card order. When one is used, UnitTally’s fee on that order is $0, and the organization pays only Stripe’s card processing fee (~2.9% + 30¢). Cash and check orders never use one, and a refunded order does not get its free transaction back.

Free transactions come from three places:

• The welcome grant. Every newly created top-level organization receives 10 free online card transactions automatically at sign-up, to test real transactions before committing to a paid tier. Sub-organizations share their top-level organization’s balance.
• Wishlist purchases. In the console’s External Retailer Wishlists settings, an organization can add Amazon, Target, or Dick’s Sporting Goods lists to display on its storefront pages, and a campaign’s External Wishlists tab can set its own. The links can carry UnitTally affiliate tracking. Once the retailer confirms the commission, the organization earns one free transaction for every $5.00 of confirmed affiliate revenue.
• Added by UnitTally. UnitTally can also add free transactions to an organization’s balance. These show as Added by UnitTally in recent activity.

Free transactions apply automatically at checkout, one per online card order, while any remain. Owners and admins can see a Free transactions card on Settings → Billing, below the Manage billing panel, that shows the Remaining, Received, Used, and Expired counts and recent activity.

When a card order has a fee to cover, storefront checkout offers supporters an optional checkbox, off by default, labeled “Cover the fees so more of the price reaches” the organization’s name. Checking it adds UnitTally’s fee and an estimate of Stripe’s processing fee on top of the listed price. When a supporter checks it, more of what they pay reaches the organization instead of coming out of the sale.

The processing fee is an estimate, not a lookup. UnitTally doesn’t know a card’s exact processing cost before the charge runs, so the estimate uses Stripe’s published rates. That’s the same 2.9% + $0.30 standard rate used in the worked example above, or 2.2% + $0.30 for verified 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Stripe’s actual fee depends on the card: Amex, international cards, and some business cards cost more than the estimate assumes.

That means a given order can net a few cents above or below the exact listed price. It’s usually within pennies on a standard consumer card, and more on a card Stripe prices higher. UnitTally’s platform-fee half of the calculation is always exact, because that fee is UnitTally’s own formula. Only the processing-fee half carries any variance, and it’s Stripe’s variance, not UnitTally’s.

UnitTally never keeps more than its disclosed platform fee. The covered amount goes through Stripe to the organization’s own connected account the same way the sale itself does. Stripe deducts its own fee there, not UnitTally. Any gap between the estimate and Stripe’s actual fee settles to the organization. UnitTally doesn’t profit from the spread in either direction.

Nothing is hidden. Once the supporter checks the box, checkout shows the itemized breakdown before they pay: subtotal, UnitTally fee, Processing fee (estimated) and total. The confirmation page, the order lookup and the confirmation email list only the fees the supporter paid, each on its own line, so the lines add up to the total. When the supporter leaves the box unchecked, the organization pays the fees out of the sale and the supporter’s receipt shows no fee lines, the same as on a cash or check order.

Online card orders have a $1.00 minimum. Below a dollar, the flat portion of the fees (UnitTally’s 30¢ plus Stripe’s own ~30¢ per-charge fee) would eat most or all of the sale, so a sub-$1 card charge isn’t worth running. This applies only to online card checkout. Manual (cash/check) orders have no minimum and can be any amount, including $0.

Plan prices:

A plan is what unlocks tier-gated features. Plus adds more than one campaign, custom pages, a custom accent color and group standings, and raises the limit from 1 admin seat to 5. Pro adds countdown and low-stock badges, a custom domain and removal of the UnitTally footer credit, and has no admin seat limit. Custom domain and the footer credit removal can also be bought as add-ons on Free and Plus. A plan doesn’t change what a manual payment costs, which is $0 on every tier. See Billing & subscriptions for how to upgrade.

• Payment methods: how the two fee types flow through Stripe Connect vs. manual entry.
• What is UnitTally?: the cost model at a glance.
• The fundraising model: where fees fit in the season arc.