Your members can pay for their membership through the sheepApp through a wide range of payment methods. These methods can be configured in sheepCRM as payment plans, allowing you to specify how many payments need to be made and how frequently they should be paid.

Your existing payment 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 payment plans option. This will present a list of payment plans showing their name, description, period and payment processor (sometimes called a payment gateway).

Click on a plan to see more details or to make changes to it. Please note that 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 - we can not make any permission changes without their consent.

From the existing payment plans list, click on the add payment plan button located in the top right to bring up a sidepanel with empty fields for your new payment plan. You can alternatively duplicate an existing plan to use as a base if that would save time.

Payment plans offer a number of options, allowing for a wide range of different payment processors and methods for your members, so it's important to understand what each field in a payment plan does:

Enter a name for the payment plan. This is viewable by your members in sheepApp so should be clear and concise, stating the type of payment(s) and processor.

Toggle whether the payment plan is active or not. Inactive payment plans can not be selected by members during the sign-up process in sheepApp.

Optionally, enter the text that should appear on the button that members will click on to select this payment plan. This can be useful to create a short version of the name of the plan - for example, "Monthly Direct Debit via GoCardless" could be condensed into "Pay via Direct Debit"

Select the payment processor, or payment gateway for this plan. The options available will vary depending on your third party payment processors set-up handled in sheep settings. For more information on payment processors, please read our set-up articles on integrations.

Set the number of payments this payment plan will split the total price to be paid into. For example, setting the number of payments to 2 would result in a £100.00 price being split into two £50.00 payments.

Please note that there may be some variation in the split amounts if the total price doesn't split evenly.

Optionally, set a number of days to defer the first payment. For example, if the payment plan consists of two monthly payments of £50.00 each and the plan has a deferment of 3 days, the member will be asked to make the first payment 3 days after completing the purchase, with the next instalment to be paid a month later. If the number of payments is set to 1, this will mean the entire payment will be deferred by the number of days set.

Set the frequency of the payment(s) to be made under this payment plan. This can be set to annually, monthly or quarterly.

Scope allows you to manage which membership plans this payment plan is allowed to be used on: On for all will appear on all membership plans regardless of settings; On except selected will not appear on items with explicit plans listed. Selected will only appear on items with this explicit plan listed.

Enter a short description of the payment plan for members to see when selecting an option during their membership sign-up. This should help the member make the right choice, so it's a good idea to explain the process.

Please note that this field supports markdown for basic formatting.

Additional information or context can be added in this field, which will appears below the "Pay" button in sheepApp. This is often used for any small print or footnotes that should be present to members before they pay with this payment plan.

Toggle whether this payment plan should have a discount (for example, as an incentive to use this payment method) or surcharge (to cover processing fees). When selecting one of the options, the field below will let you enter an amount. Please note that this is a flat amount, so entering 5 will result in £5.00 (currency defined by the object being bought) either being added or deducted from the total price.

If the payment plan should only be available to specific members, enter an access code that can be passed to your members. If the payment plan has an access code, it will be hidden from the list of payment options until the correct code is entered in the sheepApp during the sign-up process.

Set the display order of this payment plan in relation to other payment plans available. Enter a numerical value to position this plan - setting a lower number results in the payment plan appearing further up the list of payment plans. You may need to enter higher numbers on other plans to make them appear after this plan.

From the existing payment plans list, scroll down to the desired payment plan and click on it to bring up a sidepanel 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:

Existing payment plans can duplicated and used as a base for new plans. From the existing payment plans list, scroll down to the desired payment 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.

While we strongly advise not to delete existing payment plans, if the plan is no longer needed it can be deleted. To delete a payment plan, scroll down to the desired payment plan and click on it to bring up a sidepanel with fields containing the current data for the plan. Click on the delete option in the bottom right of the sidepanel, confirming the action to completely delete the payment plan.

Please note that deleting the payment plan will remove a lot of legacy data with any contacts that previously had this payment plan. To avoid this, we advise setting the payment plan to inactive instead of deleting the plan entirely.