Your contact records will need a membership plan before they will be treated as members in sheepCRM and sheepApp. These plans can be very varied, ranging from free, lifetime membership plans to paid daily memberships. Membership plans can be assigned to your contacts manually, or can be purchased through the self-service sheepApp.
How do I Navigate to Existing Membership Plans?
Your existing membership plans can be found in the sheep settings section. Go to settings.sheepcrm.com and log in to your CRM user account if not already. From the settings section, click on the membership tab in the navigation and click on membership plans option. This will present a list of membership plans showing their name, description, price, duration and whether they are set to auto-renew.
Click on a plan to see more details or to make changes to it.
You will require admin-level permissions in to be able to access and change any plans in the settings section. If you do not have access, please contact your flock administrator to update your permissions.
How do I Create a New Membership Plan?
From the existing membership plans list, click on the add membership plan button located in the top right to bring up a side panel with empty fields for your new membership plan.
Alternatively you can duplicate an existing plan to use as a base if that would save time.
While a number of the fields are straight-forward, there are a few detailed below that are worth noting as they can be very powerful tools for managing your members effectively:
What are the different Membership Plan Types?
Selecting the right plan type is crucial to managing your members effectively. Each type of plan has a different use-case:
Individual Membership
Standard membership plan that is designed for single person, who can manage their membership themselves.
Child Membership
Membership plan designed for a single child as the member, with a separate admin contact who can manage the membership.
Family Membership
Membership plan designed for multiple people, one main member manages the membership and can add additional people (subject to limits set for linked member numbers).
Joint Membership
Membership plan designed for two people, usually a pair or couple, with one person as the admin contact who can manage the membership and add their joint person (linked member).
Multi-person membership
Membership plan designed for more than two people, with one person as the admin contact who manages the membership and can add additional people (subject to limits set).
Linked Organisation Membership
Membership plan designed for organisations - the membership is applied to an organisation record, with multiple people that can be linked to share the benefits of the membership. One person can be marked as the admin contact who can manage the membership and add other employees (subject to limits set for linked member numbers).
Organisation Membership
Similar to the linked organisation plan type, with the exception that there is no support for linked members.
How do I manage costs and tax rules?
Costs in sheepCRM are Tax Inclusive so it is important to include the tax when entering cost when it applies.
Set the tax rate from the options available.
How can I set a Membership Plan to Auto-Renew?
Membership plans can be set to automatically renew when they reach the end of their duration. If set to auto-renew, every member using this membership plan will have their membership plan instantly renewed the moment it is due to expire, without any involvement from the member. This should only be applied when every contact on this plan is to be auto-renewed, irrespective of their payment method. It does not need to be set if you only wish those paying by automatic payment plans such as GoCardless are to auto-renew.
How do I allow a specific Payment Plan on a Membership?
Membership plans can be set to support a number of different payment plans. This is designed to be primarily for your members applying and paying for their memberships through sheepApp. By selecting payment plans in this field, you can limit the options available to members when buying this membership.
Payment plans set as "on for all" will be available regardless of the options selected here.
How do Joining Fees work on a Membership?
Joining fees can be added to a membership plan as an additional 'one off' payment for new members. This is primarily used if your members buy or renew their own memberships through the sheepApp. Renewing members will not have to pay this amount.
Returning members who have had lapsed memberships will have to re-pay the additional joining fee.
How do I prevent a Membership Plan from being available in sheepApp?
The last section of fields in the side panel is for sheepApp use.
These allow you to prevent the membership plan from being available to members in the sheepApp, or set whether gift aid should be promoted during the sign-up process.
How do I promote Gift Aid in the sign-up Process in sheepApp?
The last section of fields in the side panel is for sheepApp use.
These allow you to prevent the membership plan from being available to members in the sheepApp, or set whether gift aid should be promoted during the sign-up process.
Internal Use Only
Set whether the membership plan should be accessible to potential members when trying to renew or buy their membership through the sheepApp. If set to true, this membership plan will only be accessible in sheepCRM.
Prompt for Gift Aid registration on sign up
If not set for internal use, set whether the membership plan should promote gift aid during the sign-up or renewal process. If set to true, this membership plan will ask potential members to register for gift aid after the membership sign-up process.
Sort Order
If not set for internal use, set the display order of this membership plan in relation to other membership plans available. Enter a numerical value to position this plan - setting a lower number results in the membership plan appearing further up the list of membership plans. You may need to enter higher numbers on other plans to make them appear after this plan.
How do I Update or Change an Existing Membership Plan?
From the existing membership plans list, scroll down to the desired membership plan and click on it to bring up a side panel with fields containing the current data for the plan - from there you can click on a field and change the values as necessary. There are a few common actions outlined below which are worth noting:
How do I Change the Price of a Membership Plan?
If you wish to adjust the price of a membership plan, you can change the amount and currency in the side panel.
This will take effect immediately on any new membership created from the point of the change.
This will not change the price on any existing members current membership records, but the new price will apply at their next renewal.
What guidance is there for implementing price changes to membership plans?
This is a good example of a simple change that is more complicated than it seems on the surface due to how you communicate, what type of automated communications you have and also the timing of the change, when does it apply to new members and when to existing member renewals?
We recommend 3 scenarios that can be used to administrate the task to change prices:
Option 1
Implement price change now for new members (at the time you wish the price change to take effect).
Implement price change for existing members whom will get new price in their automated communications and when they renew.
⚠️Automated communications will only include this if you have automated membership cost included in your templates. For more info see the template tricks and tips article.
Option 2
Duplicate existing plan(s) to create new plan(s) for the new pricing. (These should be either set to internal only or inactive until you are ready for them to be available).
Identify all existing members who need to move to the new plan at their next renewal. Use bulk actions to set 'Renewal Membership Plan' to the one they need to change to.
Make new plans live at the correct time (when new members should be able to purchase or existing members are invited to renew).
Option 3
Just send individual announcements, or add copy to your email templates to advise prices are changing from [ENTER DATE]. Ideally you would refer to a hyper link for a table of charges on your website also.
Please be aware you may have automatic logic in your email templates including the current membership cost, as you may mislead members with this option, which is why it is not the recommended approach. Please see template tricks and tips article to compare to your templates to confirm this.
How can I Adjust the Membership Plan Length or Fixed Dates?
If you wish to adjust the length of a membership plan, you can change the duration in the side panel. Standard options will allow you to select daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and life (meaning it will never expire), but you are also able to select custom, which means that the plan has no defined duration and would need to be manually configured for each member - this is generally used on a per-member basis rather than for the membership plan itself.
You can also set dates to be fixed by using the First Available Date and Fixed End Date fields, meaning that any members using the plan will start and end on the same date range every time they are renewed - this is generally used for yearly plans that start and end at specific dates (for example, a plan that runs from 1st February to 30th September every year), regardless of when the member signed up for the plan.
This will take effect immediately for any new memberships or membership renewals processed from that point. It does not affect any existing membership records unless they are edited after this change.
How do I hide a Membership Plan from sheepApp as a selection?
If you have an existing plan that you do not wish to be selected by potential members during the sign-up process, you will want to scroll down to the Internal Use Only field and set this to true. This will not affect any members who currently use this membership plan, but it will stop any new members having this plan.
How do I Duplicate a Membership Plan?
Existing membership plans can duplicated and used as a base for new plans. From the existing membership plans list, scroll down to the desired membership plan and click on the duplicate icon located to the right of the plan. This will create a copy of the plan in the list which you can then rename and edit as needed.
How do I Inactivate or Delete a Membership Plan?
⚠️ Deleting membership plans from settings can cause many unwanted issues - as it will remove a lot of legacy data with any contacts that previously had this membership plan, hence you should always inactivate over deletion if any record using that plan exists - see below for more info.
While we strongly advise not to delete existing membership plans, if the plan is no longer needed it can be set to inactive or deleted. To delete a membership plan, scroll down to the desired membership plan and click on it to bring up a side panel with fields containing the current data for the plan. Click on the delete option in the bottom right of the side panel, confirming the action to completely delete the membership plan.