Managing Memberships

Overview

Once clients start joining your membership plans, you'll find every membership under Customer purchases > Membership subscriptions. This is where you check a member's usage and payments, renew or cancel a membership, or schedule a price change for one person. The plans themselves are managed under Promotions > Memberships, and what happens at the end of a fixed term is set under Settings > Memberships.

Viewing your members

The Membership subscriptions list shows every membership with the customer, plan, status, price, start date and next payment date. Search by customer name or email, or filter by plan and status.

Click any membership to open the member page, which shows:

• Current period - the dates the member has paid for, and what the membership includes.
• Duration - "Until cancelled", or the fixed term, with when it ends or renews, whether automatic renewal is on or off, and when the renewal email was or will be sent.
• Usage history - every class booking the membership has covered, and how much of the price it paid.
• Payment history - each charge, including any refunds.
• Card on file - the brand, last four digits and expiry of the card payments are charged to, or a "No card on file" warning. You can see it but not change it - only the member can (see the saved card).
• Discount code used at sign-up, if any.
• Actions - Renew for another term, Turn off / Turn automatic renewal back on, and Cancel membership, as they apply. Each asks you to confirm and emails the member.
• A form to schedule a price change for this member only.

You'll also find a Memberships tab on each customer's profile, and each plan under Promotions > Memberships shows its number of active members.

Payments and billing

When a membership's next payment date arrives, HeyBookMe charges the member's saved card and rolls the membership on to the next billing period. Credit balances and "per billing cycle" class allowances reset at that point; per-day, week, fortnight or month allowances keep their own schedule, counted from the day the member joined, and aren't affected by the payment.

• Reminder - members receive a payment reminder email 2 days before each payment, with a link to update their card if they'd rather pay with a different one. It isn't sent when no payment will follow - for example when the membership is cancelling or reaching the end of its term.
• Expiring card - on the 10th of each month, members whose saved card expires that month get a "your card expires this month" email linking straight to the card update form. It's sent once per card and not repeated once they've updated.
• Receipt - after each successful payment the member receives a receipt email.
• Payment day - a membership is charged on the same day of the week or month it started. Monthly memberships that started on the 29th, 30th or 31st are charged on the last day of shorter months and go back to their usual day afterwards.
• End of a fixed term - no payment is taken. The membership either renews automatically (and the new term's first payment is taken as normal) or expires, depending on your end-of-term setting. See renewing fixed-term memberships.
• Where the money goes - charges are taken through your connected Stripe account, exactly like bookings. There are no HeyBookMe fees on membership payments.

Failed payments

A membership that ended through a failed payment can't be reinstated from the dashboard - the client needs to join again from your booking page. Any bookings they'd already made with the membership are unaffected.

The best protection is to update the card before the payment date. A card that asks for extra authentication (3-D Secure) at payment time counts as a failure, but updating the card in advance does that authentication step there and then.

The saved card

Every payment is charged to one card saved against the client for your organisation. It's the card they entered when they took out their first membership with you, and it's shared by every membership they hold with you. Members change it themselves from your booking page - nobody at your studio has to touch it.

1. Open My memberships. A Payment card panel at the top shows the card on file - brand, last four digits and expiry - or "No card on file".
2. Click "Update card". A Stripe card form opens inside the booking page - no redirect to Stripe Checkout. If the bank wants extra authentication, that happens in the same form.
3. Save. The new card is used for every payment from then on, and for any further memberships they take out. The old card is removed. Nothing is charged at the time.

The payment reminder, confirmation and card-expiring emails all link straight to this form, and you can add the same link to any membership email you customise using the [membershipUpdateCardUrl] tag.

Renewing fixed-term memberships

Memberships on a plan with a duration run for a fixed term. What happens at the end depends on the setting under Settings > Memberships when the member joined.

• Expire unless renewed - from the plan's renewal email lead time, the member can renew with one click from their "Membership ending soon" email or from My memberships, where their membership shows Ending soon. You can renew for them from the member's page at any time while the membership can still be renewed. If nobody renews, it expires at the end of the term, with no further payment, and the member is emailed a link to join again.
• Renew automatically - the member is emailed ahead of the end of the term with a link to opt out. If they don't, the next term starts and its first payment is taken as normal. The member, or you from the member's page, can turn automatic renewal off and back on until the term ends.

Renewing adds another term of the same length at the member's current price. Nothing extra is charged at the moment of renewal. Double-clicks and repeated email links are safe - a renewal or opt-out only ever happens once.

Cancelling a membership

A membership can be cancelled by the member, from My memberships on your booking page, or by you, from the member's page in the dashboard.

• Memberships that run until cancelled stop at the end of the current billing period. No further payment is taken.
• Fixed-term memberships cancelled by the member run to the end of their term, and the remaining payments are still taken - the cancellation confirmation lists them.
• Fixed-term memberships cancelled by you - you choose whether it ends at the end of the current billing period (releasing the member from the rest of their term) or at the end of the current term. A scheduled cancellation can later be brought forward with End this membership sooner, but never pushed back.
• Memberships that renew automatically don't have a Cancel button for members - they turn off automatic renewal instead, which ends the membership with its current term and can be undone until then.
• Until it ends, the membership stays active and continues to cover bookings. The member sees a Cancelling badge with the date it ends.
• The member receives a cancellation email, and you receive a "Cancelled membership" email.

Memberships can also end because a fixed term wasn't renewed, because you've closed a plan and chosen to end its memberships, or because your HeyBookMe plan no longer includes memberships - see memberships and managing your subscription. Apart from a failed payment, the member always keeps what they've paid for until the end of the current period.

Refunds

Refund a membership payment from your Stripe dashboard, just as you would any other payment. The refund is recorded against the transaction in HeyBookMe and reflected in the customer's lifetime value. Refunding a payment doesn't cancel the membership - if you want it to end, cancel it separately.

Changing a member's price

To change the price for a single member, open their page and use the price change form. You'll need to give at least 30 days' notice; the new price applies from the member's first payment on or after the effective date. The member is emailed and can see the pending price under My memberships. To change the price for everyone on a plan, edit the plan instead - see memberships.

Membership emails

HeyBookMe sends members a confirmation when they join, a reminder before each payment, a receipt after it, a heads-up the month their card expires, and notices for failed payments, cancellations, price changes and plan closures. For fixed-term memberships there are also emails before the term ends, when it's renewed or expires, and when automatic renewal is turned off or back on. You receive an email for each new and cancelled membership, and when members renew or change their automatic renewal themselves. All of these can be customised under Settings > Emails - see managing emails.

Membership reports

A Membership reports card appears under Reports once you have the feature. It gives you:

• Active memberships - your active member count over time and monthly recurring revenue (MRR), with weekly, fortnightly and 4-weekly plans normalised to a monthly figure. Members who've given notice are counted as active but broken out as "scheduled to cancel" so you can see revenue at risk.
• Membership usage - how many class bookings were covered by memberships over time.
• Cancellations and expiries - churn over time, shown separately as Cancelled (ended by the member, by you, or by a failed payment) and Expired (fixed terms that ended without being renewed), with totals for each plan.

Membership payments are also included in your existing revenue reports. The "Revenue for" filter lets you pick all memberships or a single plan.

Common questions