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How to Create a Group Membership Category
Group Membership are a way of selling a block of membership subscriptions together for a fixed price. This can be used as a way of offering a discounted membership to groups of members. Group memberships are commonly used for families, but can be used for any group of members from the same club, team, or company.
Group Subscriptions should not be confused with Family Groups!
Though Group Subscriptions (group memberships) are often designed for families, they are simply a way of offering a discounted membership to groups of members who may or may not be in the same Family Group. In some use cases they are for members of the same club, team or company.
Family Groups are a way of grouping users for easier administration.
A full guide on Family Group Administration can be found here: Family Group Administration
You are reading the full guide, for the Quick Start Guide please click here: Quick Start: How to set up a Group Membership
Instructions
Sign in to your myClubhouse site with an Administrator-level account.
Navigate to the Membership Categories (admin) page:
by default this is under the Subscriptions menu.
or type “/Admin/Membership/Categories” into your browser’s address bar e.g.
or use the Search tool in the toolbar to search for Membership Categories
Create the membership categories that will be included in the group membership. A full guide on how to create a membership category can be found here: How to Create a New Membership Category
You may wish to create new membership categories that can only be obtained through a group membership, if this is the case, ensure that “Available as part of a group membership only?” is ticked under the “Restrictions” tab.
Scroll down the page to “Group Membership Categories” and click the “Add Category” button on the right hand side of the screen.
Enter the basic information for your new membership category:
Name: The name displayed for this membership category.
Description: A description of this membership category, often includes who is eligible for it and any specific perks or restrictions that make it differ to other membership categories. For group membership categories, it is best to include which membership categories are included in the category.
Is Obsolete: Make sure this is set to “No” otherwise no one will be able to use this membership category.
Select the start and end dates for this membership category. If these dates are different to those set in the membership categories being used, these dates will be used for group memberships of this category only.
Note: Start Date settings are specifically for new joiners registering for the first time.
Start Date Mode: Choose from “User selects start”, “Fixed start date”, or “Named start date” to select which mode of start date to use.
User selects start: The user chooses when they want to start their membership, from the Start Options defined below (b.).
Fixed start date: Memberships under this category start on a specific date of any year e.g. 1st September.
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 sports' season.
Start Options: Choose which date option you would like depending on which mode selected in part a.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fixed end date: Memberships under this category end on a specific date.
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 sports' season.
Select the group slot options for this group membership category:
Groups can have names: If selected, the owner of the group will be able to name the group.
Groups referred to as: This is what groups under this membership category will be referred to. In this example, “Family” is used as it is a family membership, but team, company or another name could be used, depending what the group membership is for.
NOTE: When creating a Family membership, DO NOT have the referred to as a “Family Group” as this will confuse them with Family Groups which are used for administrative purposes. More can be read about Family Groups here: Family Group Administration
Registration Wizard: This is the registration wizard used when adding users to the membership slots.
Auto-assign Applicant: If selected, the user creating the group membership will be put into the first available slot in the group. If not selected, the user can choose to add themselves or just others.
Add Slot: This green plus will bring up the following form so that you can add slots to the group membership.
Ordinal: This number defines the order in which the slots are shown to members, the lowest comes first.
Slot Count: The number of slots available (of this type) to the group membership.
Membership Category Options: Select all the membership categories that the user can choose from to fill this slot. If more than one is chosen, the user will be presented with a dropdown to choose which one they would like.
Default Membership Category: From the membership categories chosen, which one will be used when auto-assigning the user applying for the group membership.
Registration Wizard: This is the registration wizard that will be used to register a new member into this slot. If left as “Use default” it will be the one chosen for the membership category (step 7c).
Reassignment: Reassignment allows members to be removed from slots and replaced with another member, without a new group membership being created. If desired, specify how often the slots can be reassigned. This function is unlikely to be used for a family membership, but if a team membership was created, members of the team may want to be swapped in and out during the season.
OK: Press OK to confirm and save these slots to this group membership category.
Repeat step e for as many different slots you wish to include in the group membership.
Select the costs associated with this membership category. These costs will be used for group memberships of this category only, any costs associated with the individual membership categories will only be used when bought separately, not as part of a group membership.
Subscription Cost: How much you want the subscription to cost.
Subscription Cost Payment Scheme: How you want members to pay for this membership. 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
Early Payment Option: If selected, members will get a discount for paying early, amount and timescale both determined by you. This can be used to reward members who renew their membership promptly.
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.
You can find a guide on how to do these here: How to Set up Late Season/Pro-Rata Discounts (Partial Rate Calculations)
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.
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
Joining Fee: The example used Joining Fee category for the joining fee.
Subscription Product: The example used Subscription category for the subscription product.
Add Rate: Add in rates for future years or seasons.
You can find a guide on how to do these here: How to Update Your Membership Prices
Select the workflow options associated with this membership category:
Approval Mechanism:
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.
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.
Entitlements: This controls who can approve new subscriptions under this category. It is best to leave this as the site-wide default.
Select the renewal options for this membership category:
Automatically Renew: Renew memberships 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.
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
Self-Renewal: When selected, users can renew their own membership, without the administrator having to offer a 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 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.
Renewal Reminder: Reminder to 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.
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.
Select the restrictions that apply to this membership category:
Invitation Only: When selected, this membership category can’t be requested, it has to be offered by an administrator. This setting can also be used to keep a category secret from the public.
New applications: This makes the membership category open to new members, including people already registered for guest-level membership.
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 would not be eligible.
A subscription add-on is an extra item that is requested and paid for along with a membership subscription. It can be a physical item, such as clothing or a non-physical item such as association fees or a voluntary donation. Define any Add-ons you would like to offer with this membership category:
Description: 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.
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
Amount: How much the add-on will cost, or suggested amount, if not a fixed cost.
Options:
Mandatory: User must purchase the add-on with membership.
Fixed Amount: The price is fixed. If off, the user can change how much they pay, such as when making a voluntary donation.
Promote: The Add-on is optional, but will be automatically be added to the basket for purchase, but can be removed.
Payment Scheme: 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
Copy existing: This button will allow you to copy add-ons from other membership categories, without having to type them out again.
Click the “Save Changes” button on the bottom left of the screen.
Repeat all steps to create all group membership categories. Please make use of the green “Copy” button to create a category with similar settings.
The next step will be to create a Registration Wizard for group membership. Find the guide here: How to Create a Registration Wizard for Group Slot Memberships