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How to Create a New Membership Category

Owned by Peter Hickson, created
Last updated: Mar 14, 2024
11 min read

This article is about how to create a new Membership Category for your club. Most clubs have more than one category of membership, even if it is something as simple as Adult and Junior membership. This guide will help you create extra Membership Categories when you need to.

You are reading the full guide, for the Quick Start Guide please click here: Quick Start: How to Create a New Membership Category

Instructions

  1. Sign in to your myClubhouse site with an Administrator-level account.

  2. Navigate to the Membership Categories (admin) page:

    1. by default, this is under the Subscriptions menu.

    2. or type “/Admin/Membership/Categories” into your browser’s address bar e.g.

    3. or use the Search tool in the toolbar to search for Membership Categories

  3. Click the “Add Category” button on the right-hand side of the screen.

     

  4. Enter the basic information for your new Membership Category:

    1. Name: The name displayed for this Membership Category.

    2. Description: A description of this Membership Category, often includes who is eligible for it and any specific perks or restrictions that make it differ from other Membership Categories.

    3. Role when Active: Choose from “Adult Member”, “Junior Member”, or “Guest” to help the website understand which level of permissions you would like members in this Category to have.

    4. Membership Type: This is the option if you want to link this membership with another, most commonly you would choose “Core/Standalone”.

    5. Is Obsolete: Make sure this is set to “No” otherwise no one will be able to use this Membership Category.

  5.  Select the start and end dates for this Membership Category:

    Note: Start Date settings are specifically for new joiners registering for the first time.

    1. Start Date Mode: Choose from “User selects start”, “Fixed start date”, or “Named start date” to select which mode of start date to use.

      1. User selects start: The user chooses when they want to start their membership, from the Start Options defined below (b.).

      2. Fixed start date: Memberships under this Category start on a specific date of any year e.g. 1st September.

      3. Named start date: Memberships under this category start on a named date (as defined under Admin > Settings > Set Up Named Dates) such as the first day of your sport's season. Learn more about Named Dates in this guide: Named Dates

    2. Start Options: Choose which date option you would like depending on which mode selected in part a.

      1. If you chose “User selects start”, you can choose which of the options to make available (as defined under Subscriptions > Membership Start Times). The defaults are either “As Soon As Possible”, “Specific Date” or both. The latter will let the user choose a date (in the future) from which their membership will start. “As Soon As Possible” is the most popular option used for the Start Date. Learn more about Membership Start Times in this guide: Membership Start Times

      2. If you chose “Fixed start date”, you can choose which date (day and month) this will be. The user will be offered up to two start options - the selected day and month falling before the current date and the same day and month falling after the current date

      3. If you chose “Named start date”, you can choose which Named date you want to use, from those that have already been created and you can offset the date by a fixed number of days. The user will be offered up to two start options - the selected named date (plus offset) falling before the current date and the same named date (plus offset) falling after the current date. Learn more about Named Dates in this guide: Named Dates

    3. End date mode: Choose from “Defined duration”, “Season end date”, “Fixed end date”, or “Named end date” to select which mode of end date to use.

      1. Defined duration: Memberships under this Category last for a specific length of time, e.g. 1 month. This option should also be selected if you want the membership to be perpetual, i.e. have no end date.

      2. Season end date: Memberships under this Category end on the season end date (as defined under Admin > Settings > General Club Settings). This is the most common option for End Date. You can also define how many seasons you want the Subscription to last, e.g. setting Duration to be 2 years to span 2 seasons instead of one.

      3. Fixed end date: Memberships under this Category end on a specific date.

      4. Named end date: Memberships under this Category end on a named date (as defined under Admin > Settings > Set Up Named Dates) such as the last day of your sport's season. Learn more about Named Dates in this guide: Named Dates

  6. Select the costs associated with this Membership Category:

     

    1. Subscription Cost: How much you want the subscription to cost.

    2. Subscription Cost Payment Scheme: How you want members to pay for this membership. Default is used in the example, as it offers Cash, Cheque, and Stripe to cover all bases. You can read more about Payment Schemes in this guide: Payment Methods, Plans, and Schemes

    3. Early Payment Option: If selected, members will get a discount for paying early, with the amount and timescale both determined by you. This can be used to reward members who renew their membership promptly.

    4. Partial Rate Calculation: Offer a discount to new joiners who are joining late in the season and therefore for only part of the membership year.

      1. You can find a guide on how to do these here: How to Set up Late Season/Pro-Rata Discounts (Partial Rate Calculations)

    5. Joining Fee: Charge a fee to new members on top of the membership cost. This fee doesn’t apply to renewals and can be an incentive to encourage members to renew rather than leaving and coming back and having to pay another joining fee.

    6. Product Categories: This labels the payments so that they can be analysed in the Finance section, and also can be used to calculate discounts in the basket. Select the Product Categories that apply to the payments (as defined under Admin > Finance > Manage Product Categories). You can read more about Product Categories in this guide: Product Categories

      1. Joining Fee Product Categories: The example uses “Joining Fee” Product Category for the joining fee.

      2. Subscription Product Categories: The example uses “Subscription category” for the Subscription Product Category.

    7. Add Rate: Add in rates for future years or seasons.

      1. You can find a guide on how to do these here: How to Update Your Membership Prices

      2. Applicability (shown at the top of each dates tab): The range of start dates for which this cost is valid. Do not confuse these with the start and end dates of subscriptions. See guide for further explanation: How to Update Your Membership Prices

  7. Select the workflow options associated with this Membership Category:

    1. Approval Mechanism:

      1. Automatic: The system automatically approves a new member when they sign up and can pay for their membership straight away. This is the recommended option as it reduces the amount of work for your administrator.

      2. Manual: When a member has registered for membership, it must be approved (or rejected) by an administrator before they are able to pay and start their membership. This process will take longer than the automatic process but can be used if you have specific criteria for members joining your club.

    2. Members Can Change Category to: Choose whether a member is able to switch their Subscription offer to another Membership Category before they accept it. This can be useful for renewals.

      1. Members cannot change category: Members can accept or reject a Subscription offer of this Category, with no switching available.

      2. Any category for which they are eligible: Members can change the category of a Subscription offer of this Category for any other Membership Category that they meet the requirements for.

      3. Any of these categories: Members can change the category of a Subscription offer of this Category for any other Membership Category from those selected in the dropdown. Note: Restrictions will still apply to the Membership Categories when a member tries to change the Subscription offer.

    3. Subscription Form: Use this to request further information from a member using a form already created. The form would relate specifically to a membership of this type e.g. for a boat parking subscription, to give details of the boat.

    4. Waiting Lists: If membership for this category is currently full, rather than turning new members away, you can add them to a waiting list instead. When a space becomes available, you can offer membership to the first person on the waiting list.

      1. Note: The Approval Mechanism (step 7a) must be set to “Manual” (not “Default (Manual)”) in order to use the waiting list function.

    5. Resource Bindings: This can be used to allocate a resource to members, e.g. a locker or boat parking space. This keeps track of who is allocated to which resource and how many are left.

    6. Entitlements: This controls who can approve new subscriptions under this category. It is best to leave this as the site-wide default.

  8. Select the renewal options for this Membership Category:

    1. Automatically Renew: Renew memberships at a set time before the end of the membership period. This is useful for memberships with fixed durations, meaning there are lots of different renewal dates.

      1. If set to No, renewals have to be done by the club administrator. You can find a guide on how to do this here: Membership Subscription Renewals

    2. Auto-accept Renewals: If set, renewals will automatically be accepted when offered. This means that members don’t need to accept the Subscription offer before making payment. This option is not commonly used.

    3. Allow self-renewal: When selected, users can renew their own membership, without the administrator having to offer a renewal.

    4. Renewal Grace Period: When a new season starts, anyone who has been offered a renewal, but has yet to accept and pay for it is still counted as a member for emails, website access, etc for this period of time. If the renewal offer has been rejected, then the member will not have member-level access during the grace period.

    5. Renewal Reminder Period: Reminder to the Membership Secretary that there are memberships that need renewing. This time window also sets the default view in the “Bulk Subscription Renewal” page, for any memberships needed to be renewed in that time period, e.g. 14 days. It is best to set this period to be longer than the Auto-Renew period so that the membership secretary gets a warning before the auto-renewals happen.

    6. Grandfather Subscription Rates: If set, if the cost of a Subscription is edited, this change will be kept for the renewal. For example, if you edit a Subscription down to £0 from £25, when it is renewed, the Subscription will be £0 rather than reverting back to £25. This option is not commonly used.

    7. Renewal Progression: This is the order of preference for renewal categories. The default top-priority renewal category is “THIS CATEGORY”, which means the system will try to keep the member in the same category when renewing (you can delete this option if you always want the member to move into a different category upon renewal). If the member does not meet the criteria for the top-priority category, such as being too old, then the system will try to add them to the other categories in this list, in order.

  9. Select the restrictions that apply to this membership category:

    1. Invitation Only: When selected, this membership category can’t be requested, it has to be offered to people by an administrator. This setting can also be used to keep a category secret from the public.

    2. New applications: This makes the membership category open to new members, including people already registered for guest-level membership.

    3. Existing members: This allows people who have been members before to apply for this membership category. This could be turned off if setting up a trial membership, as existing members wouldn’t be eligible for a trial.

    4. Group Membership: When selected, this membership category can be included as part of a group membership but not be used on its own.

    5. Age range: Limit this membership category to a certain age range. The boxes are inclusive, but if left blank will be open. In the example, the membership category is for those under 18, so the ‘From’ box is open and the ‘to’ box is set to 17.

      1. Note: By Default, the age of a user is calculated on the day of sign up unless changed in General Club Settings (Admin > Settings > General Club Settings) to something else, such as the beginning of the season, or school year.

    6. No Date of Birth: Choose to allow people who don’t have a Date of Birth associated with their account to qualify for this membership category. For example, you may decide you do not require a date of birth for adult membership categories.

    7. Genders: This can be used to split membership different genders (as defined under Admin > Settings > Gender Options) if required. Unless charging different genders separate rates, it is best to leave this as All Genders.

  10. Define any Add-ons you would like to offer with this membership category:

     

    1. Description: Enter what the add-on is called. This can be used to help filter additional costs (such as EA fees for Athletic Clubs) as a separate cost from the membership itself.

    2. Category: This labels the payment so that it can be analysed in the Finance section, and also can be used to calculate discounts in the basket. (See Admin > Finance > Manage Product Categories and Admin > Finance > Manage Discounts). You can read more about Product Categories in this guide: Product Categories

    3. Amount: How much the add-on will cost, or how much is recommended to pay if not a fixed cost.

    4. Options:

      1. Mandatory: The user must purchase the add-on.

      2. Fixed Amount: The price is fixed. If off, the user can change how much they pay, such as when making a voluntary donation.

      3. Promote: The Add-on is optional, but will be automatically added to the basket for purchase, but can be removed.

    5. Payment Method: How you want members to pay for the add-on. Default is used in the example (as defined under Admin > Finance > Payment Methods, Plans and Schemes). You can read more about Payment Schemes in this guide: Payment Methods, Plans, and Schemes

  11. Press the Save Changes button on the bottom left of the screen.

     

  12. Repeat all steps to create all Membership Categories. Please make use of the green “Copy” button to create a Category with similar settings.