Memberships are a great way to offer customers ongoing access to your events or classes. They make it easy to manage recurring bookings and payments. This helps build a loyal community while saving time on admin. However, memberships have some current limitations. This article explains what they are and how to work around them.
Restrictions:
Restriction: Ticketless membership
Memberships don’t have a booking form to collect customer details, so they must be purchased alongside a ticket.
Workaround:
Create a “Membership registration” event with a free ticket that customers can book when they purchase a membership.
To do this:
Select Scheduling from the left-hand menu on your account, then Create an entry:
In the Information tab, add a Name and any useful information regarding the entry in the Description field:
Set the Location as No location:
Make the entry a 365-day entry so it stays at the top of your schedule list. This will make it easier for customers to view when visiting your public page. For example:
Under Tickets & Costs, select Create ticket, then add the ticket name, any relevant description, and select No cost under Pricing:
Select Save ticket.
Tailor your booking form in the Booking form tab by selecting Select & reorder fields:
Use the plus "+" and minus "-" fields to add or remove fields from the booking form, and select Save form.
Once completed, select Save & Exit to save the entry to your schedule.
Restriction: Auto-enrollment
Members must book their tickets to reserve their space and are not automatically registered for events when they purchase their membership.
Restriction: Membership discount
Discounts cannot be applied to membership purchases because payments are recurring.
Account-wide discounts do not apply automatically to members.
Workarounds:
Refund the discount amount manually in Stripe.
Create discounted member tickets for each session that members can book.
Restriction: Offline membership
All memberships must be paid online via Stripe for recurring payments. If you purchase memberships on behalf of customers, you will need their card details.
Workaround:
For "offline" memberships where payment is managed outside of Bookwhen, you can manually add customers to a customer group.
If you choose to do this, you will need to manage the list manually and, if you need to remove customers from the group, cancel their tickets as needed.
You can also set an end date if you manually added customers to a group.
To do this:
Select Packages & Discounts, then Customer groups from the left-hand menu on your account.
Open the customer group and scroll down to the Customers section. From there, select the three-dot menu next to the customer name, then Remove customer:
Select Remove at a selected time, then add the Date of removal/Time of day:
Select Remove customer to confirm.
Restriction: Switching memberships
Memberships cannot be changed to a different type after purchase. Switching subscriptions in Stripe may not sync with Bookwhen and might cause notification issues.
Workaround:
Ask the customer to cancel the existing membership and repurchase the new one.
Restriction: Enforcing membership cancellation rules
Cancellation policies can be added to the ‘Membership details’ section to inform customers, but cannot be enforced automatically. You will need to monitor cancellations manually.
Restriction: Admin-only membership cancellation
Membership payments are recurring and can be cancelled by you (as the admin user) or by members themselves. This cannot be restricted to admins only because customers agree to their right to cancel when purchasing a membership.
Restriction: Blocking membership purchase
To stop customers from buying memberships after a recent cancellation, you can block those customers in Stripe.
Restriction: Bulk changes
Membership renewal dates cannot be changed in bulk. Each membership would need to be cancelled individually.
Restriction: Cancellation and failed payment notifications
You do not receive automatic notifications for membership cancellations or failed payments. These must be tracked manually in the Customers tab.
Learn more about tracking memberships in our Membership reporting article.
Restriction: Private membership
Memberships on sale are always public. They cannot be hidden, password-protected, or made visible only to specific customers.
If you need to gain pre-approval, you will need to manage this outside of Bookwhen.
Restriction: Auto-publish/unpublish membership
Memberships can only be published/unpublished manually.
To manually unpublish a membership:
Select Packages & Discounts, then Memberships from the left-hand menu on your account.
Select View next to the membership you would like to unpublish to open the settings:
Select Edit details:
Untick the Published checkbox and select Update:
To publish the membership again, repeat the same steps but tick the Published checkbox instead.
Restriction: Owning multiple same-type memberships
Customers cannot buy multiple memberships of the same type using the same email address.
Workaround:
Create group memberships for additional attendees.
To do this:
When setting up your offer, ensure you tick the Restrict who can use the offer checkbox, select Allow additional attendees from the drop-down list, and add how many additional attendees a member can book:
Restriction: Rollover offer tickets
Customers can’t roll over or save unused offer tickets from previous membership cycles for future use.
Restriction: Prorating membership
Memberships with fixed join dates cannot be prorated if customers join mid-cycle.
Restriction: One-off membership joining fee
It's not currently possible to add a one-off membership fee to the membership settings.
Workaround:
Create a separate ticket to apply a one-off joining fee that customers can book alongside purchasing their membership. Please note that this cannot be enforced.
Restriction: Seasonal membership
Seasonal memberships with fixed durations must be cancelled manually to stop payments after the period ends.
Workaround:
You can set an end date if you manually added customers to a group.
To do this:
Select Packages & Discounts, then Customer groups from the left-hand menu on your account.
Open the customer group and scroll down to the Customers section. From there, select the three-dot menu next to the customer name, then Remove customer:
Select Remove at a selected time, then add the Date of removal/Time of day:
Select Remove customer to confirm.
Restriction: Setting membership stock limits
There isn't currently a way to limit the number of memberships available.
Workaround:
You can manually unpublish the membership to stop sales.
To do this:
Select Packages & Discounts, then Memberships from the left-hand menu on your account.
Select View next to the membership you would like to unpublish to open the settings:
Select Edit details:
Untick the Published checkbox and select Update:
Restriction: Membership payment through iDeal
Restriction: Membership card
Customers can access their membership in the customer portal as digital proof of membership.
Restriction: BACS debit
The BACS Debit option is turned off by default. However, it is highly encouraged to keep this setting off, as BACS Debit allows customers to defer their membership payment for up to 14 days while immediately enjoying the benefits.
Restriction: Reinstating cancelled memberships
Cancelled memberships cannot be reinstated.
Workaround:
Customers can be manually added to customer groups to regain benefits. If a membership is cancelled, customers must be manually removed from the group.
To do this:
Select Packages & Discounts, then Customer groups from the left-hand menu on your account.
Open the customer group and scroll down to the Customers section. From there, select the three-dot menu next to the customer name, then Remove customer:
Select either Remove immediately or Remove at a selected time, then Remove customer to confirm.
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