Contacts: Managing your members

We make it easy to manage the details and memberships, past and present, of your contacts to help you run your flock as easily as possible.

Joe Jeffries avatar
Written by Joe Jeffries
Updated over a week ago

Your contact records will need a membership plan before they will be treated as members in sheepCRM and sheepApp. Your members can sign up or buy memberships and manage their existing memberships through the sheepApp, but your staff have more powerful management tools in sheepCRM. All contacts that are connected to a membership are considered members, except the billing contact.

How do I View my Member Contacts?

sheepCRM provides a number of different views for your members, which are called segments. These segments will split your member record list by specific criteria. By default, you will have access to membership segments that split your members by membership status, auto-renewal and payments, but these can be created and changed as needed.

How do I Filter Member Contacts via Segments?

To view your member contacts via segments, go to core.sheepcrm.com and click on the membership option in the top navigation. This will display a list of segments to help you narrow down your list of member contacts. Click on a segment to filter your member list by the desired criteria. You can also quickly switch between segments by clicking on the segment quick-selector in the secondary navigation. Clicking on a member contact will bring up a sidepanel with all of the data sheepCRM has on the contact.

How do I Searching for a specific Member Contact?

If you are looking for a specific contact, you can enter their name, email or membership number into the search bar located in the top navigation. This will bring up a list of possible matches or suggestions with their name, email address, phone number and membership. Click on the one of the matches to view a preview modal with more information about the contact - click on the view contact button to bring up a sidepanel with all of the data sheepCRM has on the contact.

How do I Manage Membership for an Existing Contact?

After finding the member contact that you wish to edit, view the contact to bring up the sidepanel containing all of the data sheepCRM has for the contact. The data for the contact is split up into tabs, with a general summary tab providing an overview of key information, such as their contact details, family members and current membership status. To manage the membership of the contact, click on the membership tab in the sidepanel.

How do I Add a New Membership to a Contact Record?

Depending on your flock set-up, your contacts may be able to have multiple membership plans active at the same time. If your flock support multiple memberships, or the contact doesn't currently have a membership, you can add a new membership by clicking on the membership tab and clicking on the add membership button located in the membership summary panel.

This will bring up a modal with all of the options available when adding a new membership. Your first step will be choosing a membership plan from those defined in your settings to use. This will be used as the base for the membership, but after adding the membership plan to the contact you can customise certain aspects, such as the price, duration and start/end dates if needed.

After selecting a membership plan, you can set a specific membership number. This will be automatically generated for you if left blank, but you may wish to enter a number manually, especially if you want to keep a previous membership number given to this contact.

You can also set a start date for the membership for this contact. It is worth noting that this start date can be set in the past if you want to back-fill membership information for a contact. The end or expiry date for the membership will be automatically set based on the start date and the default duration of the membership plan.

Lastly, you can set an admin contact and billing contact. These can be different contacts who are responsible for the management (admin) or payment (billing) of the membership. This is generally used for Organisation or Child/Family memberships, where you need a clearer division of management. By default, these will both be blank and the contact the membership is being added for will be able to manage and pay for their membership. To add contacts in these fields enter name or email to search, email is recommended.

Admin Contact Permissions:

  • Communications regarding Membership

  • Add, Renew and Cancel Membership

  • Considered Active Members

Billing Contact Permissions:

  • Access to Invoice via sheepApp

  • No Communications regarding Membership

  • Cannot modify Memberships

  • Not considered Active member

Please Note:

If a parent is assigned as an Admin Contact they will have access to all information on the child account via sheepApp.

If a parent is assigned as the Billing Contact they will pay and have access to the account in sheepApp providing receipts but they will not get comms or be able to manage the child membership.

If two parents both wish to have access to emails sent from sheepCRM and manage the child's membership they will need to share an email address and sheepApp user account password in the name of one of them.

Emails are only shared with the single Admin (Parent) Contact for a Child's membership.

Click on the save button to add the membership to the contact. If the start date is set to the current date or in the past, the membership will be activated immediately.


Add a payment plan to a membership

  • Find the contact and open the membership for editing

  • The payment plan option is on the lower half of the editing form. (If you don't have any options showing then leave the records and setup your payment plans in settings)

  • Save the membership with the chosen payment plan selected.

  • The membership card will now show a new option "Unpack Payment Plan". This action will attempt to apply the payment plan to the membership. Payment plans will have their own pre-conditions which may prevent a payment plan from 'unpacking'. The Sheep system will automatically try to unpack your payment plan if a pre-condition has not been met.

Changing payment plans for a membership

  • Find the contact and open the membership card.

  • Click 'Delete future payments' to remove the scheduled payments

  • Edit the membership following the instructions to Add a new payment plan

Linked Members

A linked member is a person or organisation which is to be considered a member of the main membership record, but does not have any right over it (such as to renew or change linked members).

Persons or organisations need to have an existing contact record before they can be added.

Click on manage in the linked members field under a membership record to add or remove linked members. This will only be visible if that plan is set to allow linked members in settings, such as a family, joint or linked organisation plan.

Linked members can be managed by the main member or admin contact in sheepApp also if that is allowed in your sheepApp membership settings.

Editing or modifying a membership

Memberships can be customised or modified on a per contact basis, allowing you to change the dates, duration and price for a membership without altering the membership plan being used. This can be very useful when making allowances based on circumstances or promotional discounts for specific contacts.

From the membership tab on the contact, each membership plan will appear as a panel underneath the membership summary. Click on the membership to expand the panel, showing the details of the membership as well as any additional information captured during the sign-up process. In order to make changes to a membership, click on the actions button on the expanded panel and select the relevant option from the list. The summary has options to select current / past / all.

How do I edit the Additional Information captured during a member sign-up?

This is only if you have custom additional questions set up as part of your sheepApp membership sign up.

It does not apply to the use of sheepForms for membership application which will be in the applications section.

Whilst on a members record select Membership tab, Actions>Edit additional information

Complete Key/Question, Data/Field Type and Value and then Save/Discard.

Members who advise you they are leaving (will not renew)

Go to actions > edit membership and set the 'decided to leave' toggle to YES.

On editing a Membership if the option to select 'Decided to Leave' (or if membership remains lapsed ) is chosen, this will remove the contact from any groups at expiry + grace period.

Changing the dates of the membership

The start date of a contact's membership can be changed and the duration of the membership can be lengthened or shortened by the end date of the membership. To change the dates, locate and expand the membership panel to change, click on the actions button and click on the edit membership option from the list.

This will bring up a modal with the current settings for the membership. The start date will be editable and will adjust the end date automatically based on the duration defined in settings. However, the end date can be manually set by clicking on custom end date option underneath the end date field. This will let you set a date, which can be set in the past if you wish to expire the membership.

Renewing a membership

If the membership plan has lapsed, or is expiring soon, you can instantly renew the membership for the contact. To do this, locate and expand the membership panel to renew, click on the actions button and click on the renew membership option from the list.

Please note that this will instantly renew the membership and if a subscription payment plan has been attached to the membership, new payments for the renewed plan will be automatically unpacked and charged.

Cancelling a membership

If you wish to cancel a membership for a contact, locate and expand the membership panel to cancel, click on the actions button and click on the cancel membership option from the list.

Cancelling a membership will prompt you for a reason for leaving and remove the contact from any groups they are in, following the cancellation date.

Please note that this will instantly cancel the membership and will not refund any payments made and will not stop any unpacked (future) payments for the membership. To remove any future payments click on the actions button and click on the remove future payments option in the list. You will also need to cancel payment subcriptions already in progress with processors like GoCardless and Stripe. This is applicable for other changes like changing the price of a membership.

How do I remove a membership from the unpaid membership report if the payment added has not met the criteria for automatic removal?

You can go to actions and select Remove from unpaid report. This will remove the item shortly from the report. More info on the article linked above.

Removing or deleting a membership

If you wish to remove a membership entirely from a contact, locate and expand the membership panel to cancel, click on the actions button and click on the delete membership option from the list.

Please note that this will not refund any payments and will not stop any unpacked (future) payments for the membership. It will also lose the connections between payments and the membership so we strongly advise to cancel established memberships rather than deleting them.

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