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The amount of funding each Women's Premiership club will receive from the Irish FA is set to be cut this season.
The Women's Premiership is expanding to 10 teams for 2023 in its first year as a professional league.
Clubs will have rising costs due to professionalism but are set to receive approximately 13% less, around £700, from an IFA bursary than last season.
When asked about the funding, the IFA said its investment in women's football "has never been higher".
A spokesperson for the governing body told BBC Sport NI that, should clubs complete their club licensing, they will receive their "highest ever bursary payments".
The bursary is broken into three sections for the top-flight teams. Each of the 10 clubs will receive a bursary for their participation in the Women's Premiership, which has been cut from £3,350 to £3,150 for the new season.
The six clubs who have a team in the Women's Academy League [Cliftonville, Glentoran, Linfield, Crusaders, Sion Swifts and Derry City] receive £500, a figure which has not changed from last season, however a coaching bursary that clubs can claim has dropped from £1,500 to £1,000.
That means the total a club can receive from the IFA has dropped from £5,350 last season to £4,650 ahead of the new campaign.
One of the Irish Premiership clubs said they are "bitterly disappointed" about the funding cut ahead of the new season.
"We feel it contradicts what the clubs are trying to do and we can't grow the game on our own," the club, which did not want to be named, told BBC Sport NI.
"Legacy after the Euros is often talked about, the same as after the Under-19 finals in 2017, but we are still waiting to see what that was.
"You cannot continue to use the term legacy and not back that up. The pinnacle of the women's game here was qualification for last summer's tournament, but how do you build on that? How do you take the next step?
"The growth of the game here cannot be on NIFL and the clubs alone. The governing body must drive that growth by supporting it - and not cutting funding.
"The cost of everything is going up, from match officials to transport costs, to facility hire to elite-level coaches and backroom staff and performance analysts.
"This is before you consider professionalism in the league, and this is not a positive start as the game in Northern Ireland enters a new era.
"We cannot continue to produce international players without the IFA supporting us. The onus cannot be on clubs to do everything, we have got to be supported in the right way if the international team want to reap the benefits of the work that goes on at every club in the country."
In a statement to BBC Sport NI, the IFA said: "The annual bursaries which we provide to NIFL Women's Premiership clubs this year include an incentive to encourage them to complete their club licensing, a process that sets out standards and procedures as a basis for continuous improvement of many aspects of their operation.
"Successful completion of this will see clubs receive their highest ever bursary payments and our staff are on hand to provide continuous support and guidance to help them do this."
As the Women's Premiership moves into a professional era, there are additional costs that clubs will incur including intermediate-level match officials, paying players and licensing requirements.
The move to a professional league, which will see women players paid for the first time, comes after Northern Ireland qualified for Euro 2022, the team's first major tournament.
The majority of Northern Ireland's senior and underage squads play their club football in the Women's Premiership.
Angela Platt, director of women's football at the Irish FA, told BBC Sport in March that the association "won't rest on our laurels".
"It is not just good enough to say we have made it to a Women's Euros finals, and then that is it," she added.
"We want out underage squads, our club structure, the strength of our domestic game, our volunteers and our coaches in the game to be stronger and better.
"It's my role to make sure we harness that energy and make sure we harness the visibility to make the game grow even further."
When asked if the IFA was investing enough, Platt said: "I think they are, right now, in terms of where we are at.
"We are also investing in new roles across the system. The next phase in our transition of that is ensuring we support our clubs and our infrastructure to continue to grow that element of the game.
"That is a really important and vital part of our game is to have stronger clubs and a more competitive league structure.
"That will hopefully prove to be more beneficial to us in the future in terms of our club focus and also our talented players as well."
