Memberships
Introduction to Membership Management
Membership is a feature you can leverage when you're looking to start offering enterprise, corporate or group subscriptions for schools, organizations or the such.
The feature allows you to create a subscription that operates on a more personalized basis, where you can limit the number of available seats and grant special access to your members. This access is set, based on a specific team or group of customers that will become an active part of your group or organization. On Pelcro, it’s a form of identity management and access control enabled via the platform.
The feature is made to help you manage your memberships in a seamless and effective way. If you're familiar with Pelcro's group-owner/group-user feature, what you need to know is that we're moving the group owner/user relationship one level up, from the subscription level to the plan level. Some other must-knows before getting started are:
- A membership owner gets billed instead of all the individual membership members
- The membership owner has full control of the account
- Each member under a membership plan gets access to the same entitlements and features as the membership owner.
- The membership owner also has the ability to add and remove members based on domain or IP address via the CRM.
Think of it like a family, where the membership owner is the matriarch/ patriarch, and ideally, they are in control of the household, and then all the members, are the people who live there and have access to the same water, food, amenities, etc.
Key Terms
Membership Owner: The primary point of contact responsible for managing the membership, and its members. The invoice will be tied to the membership owner.
Members: These are the members that belong to the membership plan. They are not involved in the billing process for the membership plan. They are added only by the membership owner via email address and domain or IP address. However, they do receive all the same entitlements as the membership owner.
Once the membership plan is cancelled or expires, the membership owner loses all access to the membership plan, as do the members.
To set up the membership management feature, you follow the below tutorial, which gives a step-by-step run-through:
Membership actions & steps
A) Listing Memberships
To view your memberships follow the below steps:
1. On your Dashboard, hover over your left navigation menu > choose Billing > Memberships
2. In the search panel, use the search drop-down list to either search all of the parameters simultaneously by setting the search dropdown to "All" or refine your search further by choosing specific search filters
3. In the search panel, you can also use the search filter button to filter on any of the below-clarified search filters then click on Apply filters button to display search results.
| Filter name | Filter description |
|---|---|
| Membership status | - Active: These are your currently ongoing active memberships. - Pending: These are memberships which are pending the members accept the membership invitation. |
| Membership Plan | Filter on the plan tied to the membership plan |
| Membership creation date and expiry dates | Filter on the from and/or to dates |
Notes:
a) Your filtered criteria will be visible under the search bar. You'll be able to remove any of the selected filters by either clicking on the 'x' button next to the filter or you can clear all filters altogether by clicking on the clear all filters button.
b) You can export your memberships list, along with all the listed details into CSV format. The export will take all of your specified filters into account for the exported data.
B) Creating a Membership Plan
A step-by-step process of creating the membership plan, it’s very similar to a subscription pricing plan with a few adjustments on the way, specifically with the plan type and capacity.
1. In the Pelcro platform click on Products from the left navigation menu
2. Click on the product/s you wish to add the membership to
3. Click on Add pricing plan to create a membership plan
4. Fill in the required details clarified in below table then click on Optional to fill in the Optional fields
6. When done Click on create plan
| Field name | Field description |
|---|---|
| Nickname | Type in the membership plan name |
| Product Type | Select the product type from the drop-down menu |
| Currency | Select currency from the drop-down menu |
| Unit price | Type in the unit price |
| Revenue recognition type | Select revenue recognition from the drop-down menu |
| Billing interval | Select Billing interval from the drop-down menu |
| Interval count | Type in the interval count |
| Plan availability | Select availability from the drop-down list |
| Refund policy | Select from the dropdown list if refundable or non-refundable |
| Plan type | Make sure to select Membership from the drop-down list. This enables the feature and allows you to create a membership pricing plan instead of just a regular pricing plan. |
| Member seat capacity | Specify the maximum number of members to be added to the membership |
C) Creating The Membership owner
There are two ways you can create the membership owner for a membership plan; one way is by creating a new customer from scratch.
Alternatively, you can turn existing customers into membership owners by linking them to the membership plan. similar to adding a customer to a subscription.
1. From the left panel click on Customers
2. Click on customer or from the ellipses > view
3. Click on Add a new subscription
4. Click on add a product and select the product with a membership plan.
You can search your specific product and plan with the plan ID, name of the product, or name of the plan.
5. Add the IP address or domain under the corresponding field, depending on which option you select.
Currently, we offer two options for how this can be done. Either with an IP Address which would require the membership owner to type out the IP addresses of the devices that would be allowed in this membership, or by email address domain.
You can add an IP address range as shown below.
6. Type the domain name if you’re doing it by the domain name
7. Fill out the payment method details
8. Click on START SUBSCRIPTION
D) Adding Members To The Membership Plan
Adding members via the platform
The membership owner can directly add members from their personal dashboard. By clicking on the 3 ellipses on the right-hand side of their membership, a menu will appear with different options. This is how a membership owner can view the subscription, update the subscription or delete the subscription.
1. From the left panel click on Customers
2. Click on customer or from the ellipses > view
2. In the subscriptions screen > click on ellipses > View members
3. Click on Add your first member
4. Type the email of the members you want to add
For each member you add you type out the email address with the domain you specified when creating the membership plan. The membership owner adds emails based on the member seats created.
5. Click on ADD MEMBER
6. Your member is now in pending status
All members are on pending status until they log into the subscription site via the login button sent by email.
7. Once your member logs in or registers via the site they are automatically added to your membership plan
It's important to note that they have the same entitlements and access as the membership owner, and once the membership owner cancels the subscription they lose all access and entitlements. This also happens if the membership becomes inactive or expires.
8. Now your membership plan is activated and has active members
TIP: UPDATING A MEMBER'S ADDRESS
You can also update a member's address and shipping details after they have activated their membership via the platform. This is done by clicking the 3 ellipses on the left-hand side of each member's email and filling out the address information and updating it.
Adding members via the user dashboard
1. Click on My account
2. Click on My subscriptions
3. Click on manage members
4. Click on Invite members
If you are a developer please note that the membership management feature is also available to be set up via;
FAQs
Where can I find my group members on the platform and on exports?
You can "View members" for a specific subscription when clicking on the 3 ellipses next to the membership subscription. You can export all memberships under the "Memberships" tab on the Pelcro dashboard.
What does "activating a member" mean? How do I activate one?
Once a member is invited they need to log in/register through the link sent via email. An active member is a member who went through logging in/registering on the website. A non-active member has not. The member has to activate the membership themselves via email.
What if they were automatically added to one via IP or domain?
If the member were added via IP, they would automatically be activated once they log into the website from the corresponding IP address. If they were added via domain, they would need to log into the site using their email address linked to the domain listed.
What happens to my members if I renew/cancel the group admin subscription?
If you renew your admin subscription all member subscriptions would be renewed as well and they would still have access to all entitlements. If the admin cancels the subscription, all members would lose access to all the entitlements.
Will the member.created webhook only be triggered when a user has been invited to a membership? What if they were automatically added to one via IP or domain?
The member.created webhook will be triggered when a member has been invited to a membership.
Both the 'member.created' and 'member.activated' webhooks will be triggered when a member has been automatically added via IP or domain.
Can I create Lists & Fulfillments for users that have a membership?
To learn more about how Lists & Fulfillments handle memberships, please visit this page.
Updated over 1 year ago