In order to start using the Membership functions, the Club Owner must enable the Membership options in the Settings menu:

Once “Enable membership functions has been checked, Administrators will now see the “Memberships” menu, where membership settings can be found. Note that this checkbox will be greyed out until you have set-up a Stripe connection – as membership requires a connection with our payment provider.

The following items must be configured:

• The membership form
• Welcome and Renewal messages
• Membership Plans

Membership form

The membership form will be used by your members when joining your club.  There are three fixed fields on the form – name, email, membership plan.  Other fields can be added/removed to match your requirements.

Data from this form will be visible on the member record created as part of the Join process, and can only be viewed/changed by club Administrators.  Member details may be exported into a spreadsheet using the option on the Settings menu.

Fields can be added by pressing the ‘+’ button, and re-ordered by pressing the ‘double arrow’ button, and dragging/dropping into correct order.

An existing field can be edited or deleted by pressing one of the buttons to the left of the field.

Adding form fields is similar to creating ticket fields for events,- each field must have:

• field name:  used to identify the data and can’t be changed once created
• field label:  The label as seen by the user
• type:  The type of field – which determines how the user enters the data:
  • text:  For entering a line of text
  • number: For entering a number
  • email: For entering a correctly formatted email address
  • dateofbirth:  For entering a date, allowing for browser ‘calendar helpers’
  • dropdown:  For selecting from a list of options
  • checkbox:  For presenting a yes/no checkbox
  • note:  For entering a number of lines of text
• placeholder:  greyed out text that appears when the field is empty, to prompt the user
• description: text that appears under the field to explain what the field is for
• help popup:  text that will appear if the user presses a small (?) icon under the field
• field options:  These vary according to the field type, and may include:
  • required:  Whether the user MUST complete this field in order to save the form
  • validate: a validation regex to aid with correctness – see www.clubevent.co.uk/faqs for more details
  • initial value: just that – the initial value in the field
  • options:  Dropdown fields require a comma separated list of options for users to choose between
  • hide:  A hidden field will not show on the membership form, but can be seen by admins and used for import/export of information
• Field usage
  • You can determine which fields are used on different membership plans

Welcome & Renewal messages

These messages will be sent to users on first application and subsequent renewals to the Club plans.  You should tailor the messages to your requirements, although there is a default message in place.  You can send a test message of the forms to your email address (as per your login to ClubEvent)

Membership Plans

Again, plans can be thought of a little like ticket types from events – you can create a number of plans, either for member types such as Adults/Juniors, or plan durations, such as Annual/Monthly.  Plans can be added/rearranged using the buttons at the top of the table, and edited or removed by swiping left/right to reveal the buttons.

Membership plans have the following options:

• Name:  The name for the plan, which cannot be changed once created
• Period: Plans can be yearly, quarterly, monthly or a custom number of months
• Period Start:  When a plan should start; either at the beginning of a month, or on the join date (for a rolling plan)
• Price:  Amount that will be charged for each period
• Initial price:  Whether an initial payment will be required, before starting the plan on the period start
• Remind in advance:  Whether to remind people in advance of the next plan period (they can pay as soon as they receive the advance reminder)
• Membership Starts:  Choose whether membership starts when the member is ‘Approved’ or after they have paid the initial payment (if there is one)
• Linked members: If you require plans for more than one person (e.g. Parent & Child) this can be achieved by setting this field to how many members will be part of this plan.
• Expired period:  How many months before a member is expired (returned to just a contact) after they fail to pay for their plan.
• Hide plan:  Whether to hide the plan from the user
• Plan welcome:  Some text that can be inserted into the welcome message which is specific to this plan, using the [planwelcome] tag
• Notes:  A description of the membership plan for admin use only

Notes

Plans can be quite complex, so it is worth thinking through how you would like to operate your membership subscriptions.  Whilst people might prefer membership periods starting from the day they join, that can be a headache for club treasurers, with membership start dates spread around the year.

Key decisions are:

• Whether to start plans on someones join date (can get messy!)
• What periods to offer; annual is easy for the club, but you may attract more members with a monthly payment option
• When to start your plan; an annual plan, starting in January sounds the easiest, but consider if there are any large holidays around that period that may sap peoples funds (e.g. Christmas/Thanksgiving etc.)
• What to do mid period; if you have an annual plan, starting in January, then what happens when someone joins in September.
  • Using ‘free until period start’, you can be completely flexible in your first payment and not use ClubEvent to manage that one.
  • Using ‘pro-rated until period start’, the percentage of the period left will be charged to the user initially, and then a full period amount when the next period starts, although the initial payment amount can be changed when the membership is approved.