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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

Billing Contact Permissions:

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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, creating a future plan if the renewal date has not yet been reached.

When a membership has been removed, but then the renewed plan is deleted by a user you will no longer be able to use the actions > renew feature (as this can create issues with automation such as emails), so you will need to follow these steps;

Go to the membership record, you can set the renewal membership plan field via the actions button and edit membership.

This field may already be populated if the member has selected a change (subject to the setting to allow them to being activated).

Once this is set, the membership can be renewed and the next term will be for the new plan name, cost, duration etc as informed by the settings at that time.

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.

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.

No, membership records are not changed as a result of these actions from members. These memberships will normally be set to automatically renew, and they will still renew if the payment method has been cancelled.

When you are alerted to this cancellations it is important to check with your member on their intentions, if this is to stop the renewal, or cancel please follow your internal process and cancel the membership or set it to decided to leave accordingly.

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.

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.