With the appropriate user permissions, a user/staff member is able to add/edit Membership Types under Members > Membership Types in the main menu.
To add a new membership type, use the + Add Membership Type button.
To edit an existing membership type, click on the orange name of the membership type to access the membership type settings.
Below are some things to consider:
We recommend consolidating your membership types to make the sign-up process as easy as it can be for your members and your front desk staff. This means as short, concise, and structured as possible.
Core can handle many different rates within 1one discount group. That means it is typically not necessary to have membership types for corporates, military, special rates, etc. All these can be handled with a discount on top of the regular membership type.
Some easy exceptions to our recommendation of 'Thou shall not create membership types for discounts' is Silver Sneakers or others like it. When in doubt we can always walk you through the specific scenarios and the pros-cons of doing it one way vs another.
General Settings
Name: The name of the membership type gets displayed often. For example: Adult Individual, Metro Family, or Non-Member
Category: The membership type category is used to determine pricing rates for programs. Most associations have at least 2 categories: Member and Non-Member. Some larger associations might have 3 categories if they offer 'Branch' and 'Metro' rates so you could have 'Branch', 'Metro', and 'Non-Member' Categories.
Waivers: These are the waivers that have to be filled out for this particular membership type online.
Description: The description displays when users/members are selecting which membership type to select. The description is often left blank unless there are specific things that need to be highlighted about a specific membership type.
Options
Status: If it is inactive, it will not show as available on new units or when editing a unit. Deactivating a membership type does not deactivate any units already associated with it.
Can Visit Other Branches: Whether or not a member can access a branch other than his/her home branch.
Auto Renews: Most memberships get auto-renewed at the selected
Billing Typebut sometimes you want them to auto terminate at the end of their cycle.Reciprocity: Whether or not the membership type qualifies for reciprocity.
Available Online: If this is No the membership type will not be available as an option for members online.
Counts towards memberships: Some membership types like
Non-Memberdo not count towards yourActive Units.
Billing
You can choose what the joiner's fee is and how often the unit needs to be billed. Note that if you select a monthly Billing Type the member will have the option to pay up front in other intervals (Ex: annually, quarterly, semi-annually), however selecting a different Billing Type will restrict the member to only using that payment cycle.
To restrict to multiple specific cycles, set the billing type to monthly then exclude the cycles you do not want available as shown below.
Example: (Only Monthly and Annual options available)
Billing Changes
When making changes to the billing settings on discounts, membership types, and addons, it's important to keep in mind that these changes apply only to new registrations made after the change is saved.
Availability
Availability refers to the branch(es) that you can offer the type as a Home Branch. Core handles membership types a little different from other systems. We allow you consolidate membership types across different branches if they have the same settings.
In most cases, you do not need to have different membership types for each branch.
Access
Access refers to the branches the members can have access to. Whether or not the member can access multiple branches is controlled by the Can Visit Other Branches setting under options. Below are the most commons scenarios for these 2 settings:
Membership Type | Availability | Branch Access | Can Visit Other Branches |
Non Member | Most/All Branches | none | no |
Branch Level Member | Some Branches | Same Branches where available | no |
Metro/Association Level Member | Select Branches | All branches they can access | yes |
To select multiple branches on the availability or access selection box you can hold CTRL on your keyboard while clicking on the mouse.
Rules
Most membership types have limitations for who can be in them and what the ages can be. Core uses an explicit approach for defining rules. This means if there is not a rule explicitly defining a condition, then the condition is allowed. In other words, if there is a limit you must add a rule for it.
Rules must be made for any age range that has a limitation.
No members allowed is considered a limitation.
Below are some examples of most common membership types and their rules:
Adult Individual:
Family:
Require Inactive Adult
It's helpful to require an adult on some membership types like Non-Members so that the primary on the account is over 18 and/or not a child. This is most common when parents are registering a child for a program as a non-member/participant. We recommend enabling this setting to require a non participant account to have the parent as the primary on the account.
Advanced Settings
We have a number of advanced settings that can control billing options and the active status of membership types. If you have questions about these options or how to set them up, please reach out to our support team.
