As part of your registration forms, you can collect payments in several ways.
Everything due immediately
This is the simplest option. People cannot complete registrations without paying for the full amount.
Deferred payments
Allow people to pay some or all later. Whatever is not paid at the time of registration is available to be paid through the participant profile. However the system will not automatically charge anything.
With deferred payments, you can specify a partial amount which must be paid immediately. For instance, you may require a $25 deposit immediately, but the rest can be paid later.
You can also choose to have any equipment ordered paid immediately.
For registrations with deferred amounts, you can record future manual payments. To the system, a manual payment is one made outside the website or app (e.g., they write you a check, give you cash, etc.).
If the user has a payment method on file (which you can require if you want), you can also submit a payment on their behalf. If you have their credit card or bank information, you can also submit a payment on their behalf.
Payment plans
You can define a payment plan. Unlike deferred payments, the system will require the user to enter a payment method and will then automatically make charges according to the timing you have set up.
With payment plans, you can opt to have any equipment ordered paid immediately or bundled into the payment plan.
You can provide an option for people to pay everything at once, and even offer a discount if they do so. For instance, the payment plan might call for $750 to be paid over the course of 3 monthly payments of $250. But you could provide an option for full payment up front for a total of $700. Or just provide the option to pay up front with no discount.
Depending how you define the fees and the payment plan, it's possible for the last installment to put people over the full amount they owe. The system will automatically adjust any upcoming installment so that does not happen. We will not collect more than the total they owe.
Once the registration has been completed, you can adjust individual payment plans. From the example above, the default plan is $250/month for a total of $750. If you want, you can adjust that for individual registrations to something else, like $100 every two weeks. And the system would automatically take care of making the last installment $50.
Subscriptions
Finally, instead of having the system take out a set amount in total, you can set up recurring payments which do not end until they are stopped by you.
Like payment plans, the system automatically charges the default payment method on file for a user. The charges are on a set schedule.
Unlike payment plans, the total amount you define on the registration form for a subscription. is a repeating amount. With the payment plan, you define both the total amount overall and also how much will be paid each installment.