You can create 2 types of membership packages, seasonal (fixed date) or date of purchase (continuous/rolling).
Note: You can offer the person to pay in Full or by installments. If you offer the continuous membership - this would be paid by installments and is only possible if paid online.
You should create different packages for all memberships available at your venue. e.g. adult, student, junior, family / groups.
Step 1:
To create a membership package click on the 'Membership' module on the left hand side within the admin area, then click the 'Add New Package' button.
The first section to complete is the details section:
Enter the name, code (if applicable), description and eligibility of the package.
Choose the availability of the package.
- Anyone can join (public) - The package will be on display for the public to purchase. All newly created packages are displayed publicly by default.
- Invite only (closed to new members) - The package won't be displayed for the public to purchase. An invite will have to be sent to purchase this package. Please note that all your existing packages will not be displayed publicly by default. You will have to change the availability of your existing packages to 'anyone can join', for the package to be publicly available.
- Hidden and closed to everyone - The package won't be available to anyone (i.e. your members won't be able to 'renew' a membership into this package). Use this status to prepare your package before it's available to the public. Once the package is available, you should change its status.
- Archived (completed) - The package is no longer available at your venue.
We have a new feature that has been added you can add a minimum and maximum age to the package you are creating. If you only add a minimum age, it will be displayed as '[Min Age] and over'. If you only enter a Max age it will displayed as '[Max age] and under'. If you enter both it will display as '[Min Age] - [Max Age] years'.
The system does check the age so a member must have a DOB on their record which makes them eligible to join the package. The members that fail the 'age validation' for a membership package they are trying to join, will be shown an error on screen advising they need to contact the administrator of the club or select another package. The admin can then add them to the correct package or advise them to head over to your membership page and select a suitable package.
Next select the type (group or individual) and category (Adult, Junior, Family) of the membership package.
Contact tags can now also be applied:
Once a user signs up to a membership, they will automatically have the tag applied to their contact record.
You can begin typing to show existing tags or create a new tag by pressing enter when you have completed typing.
You will notice you can also 'Manage contact tags' here.
Step 2:
After completing the details section you can decide the dates of the package.
First, you will have to decide the type:
- Same dates for all members - This allows you to put in a fixed start and end date, which will be the same for all members. Venues with seasonal memberships should use this option.
- Based on the date purchased - This allows you to select the term length which can be a set number of months e.g. 12 months or 'continuous (no end date)'. If you select 'continuous (no end date)' this will be a rolling membership, with the only payment method being online monthly direct debit.
You can also decide your grace period for renewing at the end of this membership. This extends the membership by the number of days entered into the grace period box. If the membership period ends on 31st March and '20' days entered in the grace period box - the member will have until 20th April to renew their membership. After the grace period, any membership that is not renewed in a new package, will be moved to 'lapsed' status.
Now, decide the costs of this package: Depending on what you have chosen- you will get different options: If you are going to offer Continuous Package and Monthly Installments Option click here:
Payments
You have options of how you collect payments for your packages. If you would like to accept online payments, you will first have to create a Stripe account . You can do this by clicking on the 'setup your account' link. It is very simple and we have this guide if needed. Registering With Stripe
If you choose not to use Stripe, please note that any transactions made will need to manually added. There are many benefits to both your member and also you as administrators to using Stripe. Please see: The Benefits Of Collecting Online Payments - Our Top 10!
If you decide to accept cheque, cash and other methods, you will have the option to add instructions for your members in the boxes below.
Payment Options : Click on the option below for further instruction
Payments in Full
If you select 'allow payment in full', all payment methods will be available i.e online, cash, cheque, other.
Free Membership Packages
If you are creating a membership that requires no payment, such as an Honorary membership, you can set the package costs to £0.00. When members are added to these packages, the payment status will default to 'Paid'.
The final part of creating a package is deciding the payment methods you will accept for this package.
If you would like to accept online payments, you will first have to create a Stripe account . You can do this by clicking on the 'setup your account' link.
If you decide to accept cheque, cash and other methods, you will have the option to add instructions for your members:
Continuous Package and Monthly Installments Option
If you have this option, you will only get the option to select Credit Card. Check the Credit card box to enable the Allow payment in installments box to open. More information is in this article: Membership Packages - Payment By Installments
Please note: there is an additional charge from Stripe of 0.5% if online installments are selected. This charge is taken from the full price of the installment and in addition from the other charges. You may want to have a slight increase for the convivence of installments for your members to cover this charge.
Enter the monthly cost and also the renewal cost - this can be the same and also changed at a later date.
The Installment payment date options: This means this will work out when the payment is made. I.e. Today is the 4th January - if you choose the below this is date the 1st payment and continuous payments will be collected.
Unless you select - Enable pro-rata cost on the first payment : Pro-rata payments are available on continuous subscriptions only. If enabled we’ll take a pro-rata payment as soon as possible and then schedule the recurring payments from the next available payment date. So in the above example, if you selected 1st Month- and enabled prorata - it would take payment today (4th January for 27 days of January) and then again 1st February for the full amount.
Payment Reminders
Finally, decide if you would like to send payment reminders to your members. If they haven't paid yet we'll automatically send a reminder email to membership primary contacts 7, 14 and 21 days after a payment request was first sent to them. You can enable or disable these emails here.
Once you are happy with all the details of the membership package, click the 'Save package' button at the bottom of the page.
Your newly created package will now be listed in the membership module.
To import members into your membership package(s), follow these links:
If your venue uses seasonal memberships, when it comes to your renewal period, you should create a new membership package, using details from your current package, e.g. Adult 2019. You can then import from your current package into the new package. These members will go into the new package with a payment status of 'Pending', until payment has been received.