Memberships can provide access to online courses, allow clients to register for specific services, and/or add credits to a customer's account. BusyPaws allows you to customize your available memberships in a variety of ways. Whether you want to pair your in-person services with online content, set up extended payment plans, or restrict access to some of your services, memberships can help you ensure you're providing clients with the experience you want.
In this guide we'll cover the basic information about what memberships can do:
To learn more about the steps involved in building and managing your memberships, check out our help guides on Creating & Editing Memberships and Membership Subscriptions.
Paid membership subscriptions are only available once Stripe payments have been set up on your BusyPaws account.
Membership Features
Customer memberships can be a useful tool in managing your customer process and experience. Memberships in BusyPaws have four main features that can be used to customize your available offerings.
Provide Access to Courses
Courses are used to provide information to your clients online through their Client Portal account. Once you have created a course in BusyPaws, the only way for one of your clients to view the course content is for them to possess a membership providing access to it. This allows you to control who is accessing your online content and even group online courses with other services.
i.e. Pairing an in-person training course with supplementary online materials such as training notes or videos.
Provide Access to Services
Assigning services or series to a membership allows any membership holders to book those services through the Client Portal, even if they are not enabled for public booking. This feature can be used to restrict access to specific services based on any desired prerequisites.
i.e. Only clients with the Daycare Crew membership can book the Doggy Daycare service through the Client Portal, allowing you to set up a screening appointment prior to a new client booking daycare.
Issue Credits
Memberships can be set up to issue credits once or at specific intervals. Those credits can also be set to expire on the same interval, if desired. The credits issued can be specific service/add-on credits or may be cash credits.
i.e. For the duration of the membership, provide two Puppy Training service credits every month. If the credits are not used before the end of the month, they will expire rather than roll over to the next period.
Set Up Recurring Billing
Choose your preferred payment plan for the membership. Charge clients once or require payment on a recurring schedule indefinitely or for a set term. If a set term is chosen, membership features (available services, credits, courses, etc.) will only be available to the client within that term.
i.e. Charge clients $50/month to access an online course for a period of 6 months.
Payment processing fees are 3.4% + $0.30 for recurring billing, compared to 2.9% + $0.30 for standard payments.
Membership Statuses
There are three possible statuses for a membership subscription: "Active", "Paused", or "Inactive". The status of a client's subscription will dictate billing and their ability to access membership content.
Active | Active membership subscriptions follow the payment plan as indicated by the Membership Details settings at the time of activation. While a membership subscription is Active, the subscribed client will have full access to any courses or services associated with it, and will receive any relevant credits, as indicated by the membership's current Included Benefits settings. Any newly purchased or assigned membership will be Active by default.
Note: Manually assigned subscriptions will not charge the client, even when marked as Active. |
Paused | When a membership subscription is Paused, all payments are stopped and access to membership content is temporarily suspended. Its expiry date (if any) will remain unchanged. Paused membership subscriptions may be resumed (reactivated) at any time.
Membership subscriptions can only be Paused by you or one of your team members. Clients cannot pause or resume subscriptions themselves.
Resuming (un-pausing) a membership subscription that was paused will reset its activation date. Any credits associated with the membership will be allocated based on the new activation date.
i.e. If credits are set to be assigned monthly, the next set of credits will be generated one month after the membership has been resumed. |
Inactive | Membership subscriptions are marked as Inactive when they expire (i.e. reach the end of their set number of terms) or are cancelled. When a membership subscription is changed to Inactive the client loses all access to the membership content. Any related courses or services will no longer be accessible to the client and all payments will cease. Inactive membership subscriptions cannot be reactivated. |
Memberships are a great way to manage customers' access to your services and content. To learn more about the various aspects of memberships, check out the following help guides:
Note that if you are looking to set up a membership for the express purpose of controlling access to one or more of your services/series, you may also find our Can I restrict access to a service? FAQ article useful.