Memberships
Memberships allow you to charge customers automatically on a recurring basis (ex. every week, every month or every year) - and in return, give them discounted rates or credits for services at your facility.
You can visit the Memberships page by navigating to Services > Memberships (opens in a new tab) in the Swift Admin Dashboard.
When to Use Memberships
Memberships are an incredible source of recurring revenue, and can be very profitable for any type of business if done right. They help offset the seasonality inherent in the sports business, ensuring that you are making money throughout the year. It also allows you to offer a more premium experience to your customers.
You can use memberships for:
- Managing a team and giving the team members exclusive access to your facility
- Creating a group of people using a free ($0) membership
- Making special membership offerings for different age groups or special sections of society (veterans, teachers, etc)
How to Create a New Membership
First Impressions
When you first load into the Memberships page, if you already have memberships set up, you'll see a list of your memberships. Each of these memberships will show their name, price, payment period, and the number of members.
If you haven't set up a membership yet, the page will appear blank.
Click the black "New" button in the top right corner of your screen to create a new membership.
Name Your Membership
Use the Name box to create a name for your membership. Common naming conventions among our clients include "Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum," "Double A, Triple A, Major Leagues," and "Standard, Premium, Premium Plus." Your names should ideally differentiate the memberships from one another at first glance.
Add a Description
Use the Description box to explain what perks members will get from purchasing this membership. It's best to be as thorough as possible so that customers know what they're buying. You can even edit the description you add with headings, lists, bold text, alignments, hyperlinks, and much more!
Set Up Your Pricing
Pricing for memberships is recurring, and can be set to a monthly or yearly rate. Simply enter your price and select the billing rate. However, there are cases where you may want to set the membership up as a free membership.
For example, if the coaches at your facility are required to book spaces like regular clients through the client-facing interface, but you want to give them discounted booking rates, you can set up a free membership for coaches specifically.
Set Up Discounts
If one of the perks that customers gain from purchasing your membership is discounted rates on other services, these discounts will need to be applied within the Pricing section of each individual service. An example of this is covered in the articles on Rentals, Lessons, and Classes.
Set Up Credits
If one of the perks that customers get from your membership is free services, then you'll need to set up credits. These credits are similar to package credits and can also be redeemed during the checkout flow for discounts. However, membership credits are slightly more complex and require additional configuration.
When you first click the blue "Add credits" button, a dropdown will open up with several options:
- Firstly, let's set up the service and duration. For example, if you wanted members to have access to 5 free hourly batting cage rentals, you would select cage rentals as the service and set the minimum duration to an hour.
- Next, let's add the number of credits that you want to include in the "Credits" box.
- Now, let's structure your credit setup. If you want the credits to renew on a regular basis, then select a daily, weekly, or monthly renewal period. If you want the credits to be one-time usage, then set the renewal period to "Never."
- Finally, if you set your credits up to renew, but you don't want members to stack and accumulate credits, you'll need to toggle "Limit credit usage" on. From there, you can set how many credits need to be used within your credit renewal period.
Save the Membership
Click the black "Save" button at the bottom right corner of the page to save your membership in Swift.
Congratulations! You've officially set up your first membership in Swift.
Using Advanced Membership Features
To set up advanced membership features, click on the "Advanced Settings" section at the bottom of your membership setup page to access the advanced features.
How to Collect Tax on a Membership
Enable the "Collect tax" toggle to charge customers a pre-defined tax rate when they purchase this membership. This will populate the correct tax amount on your booking page, as well as internally on the admin side of Swift when you charge customers.
If you don't have any tax rates created, visit the Tax Rates settings section to learn how to add them.
How to Set Up a Membership Initiation Fee
If you want to charge a one-time fee alongside the initial membership purchase, enter the desired fee in this box.
How to Change the Membership Billing Cycle Start Date
To modify the start of the membership, you can adjust the "Start billing cycle on" dropdown. There are 3 options here:
- Day of purchase: The default behaviour, the customer will get billed as soon as they purchase the membership
- 1st day of the period: The billing cycle will be set to the beginning of each period. For monthly memberships, this will be the 1st of the month. And for yearly memberships, this will be January 1st.
- Specific date: The customer will get charged on a specific date in the future, and the period (monthly or yearly) will begin from that point onwards
It's important to note that for options 2 & 3 above, if the customer joins after the intended start date, payment proration will take place.
For example, if there is a $100/month membership, set to bill on the 1st of every month, and a customer joins on the 28th - they will be charged a prorated amount (ex: $6) for their first payment. The next payment will be in full, and will occur a few days later. Proration only applies for the payment and not membership benefits.
How to Change the Membership Billing Cycle End Date
Similarly, you can also modify the end of the membership. To do this, adjust the "End membership on" dropdown. There are 3 options here as well:
- Day of cancellation: The default behaviour, the membership, it's benefits, and the associated automatic payments will all stop as soon as they cancel the membership
- After N billing cycles: The membership will automatically cancel after a specific number of billing cycles. This is what you'd use to create a 3-month, 6-month, or 9-month membership.
- Specific date: The membership will automatically cancel on a specific date.
For cancellations, prorated refunds will not occur. So, if a customer cancels their memberships a few days after joining it, they will not receive a refund for that month. You can choose to give them a refund from the Swift Admin, but it will not happen automatically.
How to Hide a Membership and Make It Private
Under "Advanced Settings", you can turn on the "Private" toggle to "On" to make a membership private.
By doing this, only customers with a direct booking link to this membership will be able to book it. It will be invisible to all other customers, and will not appear on your booking page.
How to Edit a Membership
To edit a membership, click into the specific membership from the Services > Memberships (opens in a new tab) page and you will be taken to the "Edit Membership" form.
Here, you can edit any of the details mentioned above. Just remember to click "Save" at the bottom to apply your changes!
How to Duplicate an Existing Membership
To make it easier to create multiple memberships, you can click into an existing membership on the Services > Memberships (opens in a new tab) page, and then click the "bottom arrow" icon on the top right, beside the "Copy direct booking link" button.
You'll now be navigated to a new "Add Membership" form, with all the details of the previous membership filled in! The title will have the word "(Copy)" added to it, to indicate that this is a duplicated membership.
How to Delete a Membership
To delete a membership, click into an existing membership and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There, you'll see a "Delete" button on the bottom left.
This button may be disabled if you don't have the permission to delete it (in which case, you should talk to the owner or someone with more access).
Another common case that causes the button to be unavailable is if you haven't removed all of your customers from the membership. If that is the case, see the section below to learn how to remove customers from your memberships.
If the membership can be deleted, you can click Delete and hit "Confirm" on the modal that appears to remove this membership. Remember, this action cannot be undone.
Miscellaneous
There are some additional things you can do with memberships, which are explained below.
How to Create a Direct Booking Link for a Membership
Want to send a direct link to book a membership to a customer? Perhaps you have a private membership that only specific customers can book? Or you would like to add a button on your website that takes customers directly to this membership?
This button does exactly that! On the top right of a membership form, you should see the "Copy direct booking link" button. Click this, and a direct link to the membership will be copied to your clipboard.
How to Change How Memberships Look On My Booking Page
You may also want to control how the "Memberships" category as a whole appears on the booking page. You may want to call it "Monthly Subscriptions" instead of the generic "Memberships" shown on Swift. In that case, you can visit the Services > Memberships (opens in a new tab) page in your admin dashboard, and click the "gear" icon on the top right.
You will now see a modal pop up, with a few options. Here, you can customize:
- The title of the Memberships category - you can call it "Monthly Subscriptions" for example
- The description of the Memberships category - you can add any additional context here
Once you hit Save, both of these changes will be immediately reflected on your booking page.
How to Cancel a Membership For a Customer and Remove Them From a Membership
A customer can be removed from a membership using two methods:
- Scroll down to the bottom of the membership page and you will see a list of the associated members. From there, click the circular arrow button with a strike-through to cancel the customer's membership.
A modal will pop up and ask if you want to cancel the membership for this customer. Click confirm to cancel the membership.
- Navigate to the Customers tab (opens in a new tab) and select the customer whose membership you want to cancel. Navigate to the "Activity" tab, which is the second tab from the right. Then, click the circular "X" button to the right of the membership that you would like to cancel.
The same cancellation modal will pop up and ask if you want to cancel the membership for this customer. Click confirm to cancel the membership.
Memberships FAQs
1. I have a team that trains at my facility. How do I set them up with a membership if they have paid their fees separately?
If a team has paid their team dues through a separate method, you can set up a free membership for the team. Go through the membership creation process outlined above, set a price of $0, and when you're finished, make it private. Then, send the link to the membership directly to the team to ensure they get their benefits!
2. Can membership credits be applied to different services? For example, can a membership credit apply to both a cage rental and a hitting lesson?
As of right now, Swift only allows membership credits to be applied to a specific service. You can set up credits to apply to specific rentals or lessons. Credits that are set up to apply to rentals cannot be applied to lessons, and vice versa.
However, credits can be applied to the different options within a specific service. For example, if you set up the membership credits so that they apply to rentals, and you have rentals for batting cages and pitching mounds at your facility, these credits could apply to both types of rentals. To make this happen, you would have to select both the batting cage rental and the pitching mound rental when initially setting up the credits in Step 5 (opens in a new tab). The same approach can be used to make membership credits apply to multiple types of lessons.
3. When do credits replenish? If my membership credits are set to renew monthly and a client purchases a membership for which they are charged on the 15th, does that mean their credits renew on the 15th of each month?
When you set up membership credits to renew on an interval - this is referring the calendar timing (ex. renewing monthly is based on the calendar month).** This **does not mean that credits refresh with the billing cycles of clients.**
In the case of the question above, let's say a client purchases a membership that comes with 8 monthly credits. If they were to use all 8 credits by the 15th, their credits would not refresh until the start of next month.
If you'd prefer to align the billing cycle with the calendar month, the best option would be to switch the billing cycle in advanced settings so that it always bills on the first of the month ensures that credits refresh with the billing cycle.
4. Do credits apply to classes?
Yes, credits can apply to classes, but only classes that are set up as drop-in classes. If you are going to offer a membership with credits for a specific class, please ensure that the class type for that class is set to drop-in.
5. How do I find how many credits I have left?
The best way to determine the number of credits you left (as a customer) is to go through the booking process for a service.
For example, if you purchase a membership that offers you 8 credits for a one hour batting cage session per month, the best way to determine how many are left is to go through the process of booking a batting cage rental. As you go through checkout, the system will calculate how many credits can be redeemed against the slots you've selected (so if you select 1 slot, you will see 1 available credit to be used)
6. It seems like something's wrong with my credits, I keep getting a message that none of my credits are eligible. How do I troubleshoot credits?
If you recieve the message that "none of the credits you own are applicable to this purchase," try working your way through these three troubleshooting options.
Firstly, check to see if there are any restrictions on the credits associated with your membership. A common facility restriction is that no more than 2 credits per week can be used to book a service. Accordingly, if you have already hit the weekly limit for credit-based bookings, this message will appear. Please see FAQ 7 below for more information on how membership credit usage works in Swift.
Additionally, you may want to check that the credits can be applied to the service you are attempting to book. As mentioned above in FAQ 2, membership credits can be set to apply to different types of rentals or different types of lessons, but not to both rentals and lessons. Check the membership to determine the services for which the credits can be used.
Finally, check to see if you have used up all of your applicable credits for the month. As mentioned in FAQ 3, credits refresh with the calendar period, not the billing cycle.
7. If making a booking for next week, does that mean that credits are registered for use this week or next week?
Many facilities place restrictions on credit usage, most commonly on a weekly basis. Therefore, when booking, it can be confusing to know if you've used your credits appropriately based on restrictions. Let's break down how this works.
In Swift, a credit is considered "used" in the week for which the booking is to take place.
Let's break this down further based on the example that we've used throughout the FAQ section. Assuming that I own a membership that gives me 8 credits for one hour batting cage sessions in a month. We can also make the assumption that the owner of the facility has restricted credit usage to two credits per week.
In this scenario, if I were to book two hour-long batting cage sessions next week using my credits, those credits are considered "used" next week, not this week. In this instance, I would not be able to book any additional batting cage sessions once next week rolled around. However, in this scenario, despite having booked sessions next week, I could still book two batting cage sessions in this current week, without impacting next week's sessions. Again, this is because credits in Swift are considered "used" within the week of the booking occurring, not the week that the booking was made.