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First-time setup checklist

Do these jobs in order before assessing the whole season's fees or inviting every family. The first pass should take about 30 minutes if your roster file is ready; Stripe's identity and bank review can take longer.

1. Confirm the organization, workflow, and year

Open the organization dashboard, then Settings.

  • Under Organization Profile, confirm the Organization Name, optional EIN, and Fiscal Year Starts In.
  • Click Save Changes.

  • Under Accounting Workflow, confirm where your official books belong:

    • Official books kept elsewhere keeps MusterSheet focused on student fees, payments, fundraising credits, balances, and parent statements.
    • Integrated Accounting also keeps the booster ledger, categories, budgets, reimbursements, receipts, and treasurer reports in MusterSheet.

  • On the dashboard, confirm the Program Year or Fiscal Year card shows the period your board expects.

New organizations start with official books kept elsewhere unless the person creating the organization chooses Integrated Accounting. Organizations that were already using MusterSheet's ledger remain integrated. You can change the workflow later in Settings: existing accounting history is preserved, and student activity from before the change is never back-posted into the ledger.

Started the organization as a booster officer?

Settings also shows a Band Link card with the code your band's director will use to link the band. Nothing on this checklist waits for that link — do every step below now and hand over the code whenever the director is ready. See Link the band.

2. Add the officer team

Under Settings → Staff, add the president, treasurer, and assistants using the email address each person will use for MusterSheet. Presidents and treasurers control settings and approvals; assistants can handle much of the daily data entry.

Read Staff roles & permissions before granting access.

3. Build the student roster

Open Students from the organization dashboard.

  • For a few students, use Add a Student.
  • For a full program, use Import from CSV, review the Import Preview, then click Confirm Import.

Do not invite families until names, grades, and sections look right. The full walkthrough is in Build the roster & connect parents.

4. Set up the books, if applicable

If Accounting Workflow says Official books kept elsewhere, skip this step and continue to fees. Record the organization's income and expenses in your outside bookkeeping system.

If it says Integrated Accounting, open Ledger.

  1. On Starting Balance, click Edit… and enter the organization's bank balance on the first day of the fiscal year.
  2. Open Categories and review the starting income and expense categories. Rename, add, or archive categories so they match the board's reports.
  3. Open Budgets and enter this year's amount for each category if the board has approved a budget.

The starting balance is not income. It is the money the organization already had when this fiscal year began.

5. Create and assess student fees

Open Fees.

  1. Create each season fee. Choose Paid at once for a single due date, or Paid in installments to enter up to six installment amounts and due dates.
  2. Choose who should receive it — the whole roster, one grade, or one section — and click Review & Assess.
  3. Check the confirmation card. It shows exactly who will be charged and how much (for example, "$250 to all active students — 41 students") before anything happens. Click Confirm — Assess Fee to charge them, or Cancel to back out.

Assessing the same fee twice does not create a duplicate charge — students who already have the fee are skipped, and the confirmation card tells you how many will be.

If another officer adds a student to that group while the card is still on your screen, Confirm stops and asks you to review again — the numbers you approved are the numbers that get charged.

6. Connect families

You can connect a parent in either of two ways:

  • Personal email invitation: open Invites & Parents, choose the student, and send the invitation. The link grants access immediately when accepted.
  • Parent-requested private link: direct the parent to /boosters/join. They enter their own roster email and receive one private link for every matching student in this organization. No roster is shown and no staff approval is needed.

Parent email columns in a roster CSV create pending parent links for those students and power the private email-match request. Review them under Invites & Parents and follow up with families who have not connected.

7. Decide whether to accept online payments

Online card payments require two separate things:

  1. active Booster or Program access for the booster suite; and
  2. completed Stripe payout setup for the organization's bank account.

Under Settings → Online Parent Payments, click Set Up Payouts with Stripe, finish Stripe's questions, return to MusterSheet, and use Check Status if setup still shows as incomplete. Then confirm the Fee Basis matches the rate Stripe gave your organization.

Parents will not see Pay Online until Stripe reports that charges are enabled. Cash and check recording continues to work without Stripe.

See Trial, billing & online payments.

8. Run a small test before the full rollout

Use one test student or an officer's own student to check the entire path:

  1. open the statement as the linked parent;
  2. confirm charges and due dates;
  3. record a small cash/check payment or complete an online payment if enabled;
  4. confirm the student statement and balance update;
  5. if you use Integrated Accounting, also confirm the ledger updated and run Treasurer's Report; and
  6. run Balances Report.

Once those screens look right, invite the rest of the families.