Introduction
Due to the way the founding fathers set up the fitness industry in the olden times, most facilities charge their members monthly (a variable length of time), whilst their members typically attend a given number of sessions on a weekly basis (a fixed length of time).
Older gym management products tie the payment cycle with the session/credit issue cycle, meaning that (for a long time) gyms had to issue session access/credits on a monthly basis – often leaving members without access to sessions or with access to session that they shouldn’t have had.
Since it launched, Quoox has deliberately kept the payment cycle separate from the credit cycle. With Quoox Ultimate, it is therefore very easy to charge members on a monthly basis, but issue credits, say, every 28 days (4-weeks). This means that members are charged when they should but, and always have the perfect goldilocks number of sessions (not too many, and not too few).
Whilst most clients typically adopt the “monthly charge / 28 day credit issue” model from-the-off, some find themselves wishing to change from a “monthly charge / monthly credits” configuration. To do this correctly, it is important to follow the right steps and understand what is happening behind-the-scenes.
The common mistake
The most common mistake made is that clients update their existing credit packs’ validity to 28 days (from, say, 31 days), and update existing membership payment plans to issue the credits every 28 days.
Whilst this is fine for any new memberships issued, it leaves existing members already assigned that membership with a problem. This is because, when you add a membership to a member, two key elements are “baked in”: the credit issue frequency, and the payment amount. This is because the membership, when assigned to the member, is akin to a contract. It is not something that would/should typically change.
Therefore, when you change the credits packs and membership plans, it often leaves legacy members with a credit issue period of 1 month, but credits being issued with a validity period of 28 days. This therefore leaves them with a gap of up to 3 days per month when they do not have any valid credits to be able to book.
It is therefore important to follow a controlled process when migrating members from a monthly credit issue period, to a 28-day credit issue period.
Migrating from monthly to 28-day credits
Very often clients will have credits assigned across multiple memberships. Therefore, updating credit packs without fully considering the implications can have undesired knock-on effects. Several reports are available in the reporting section to help identify the usage of your credit packs, so you can determine the best approach.
The safest method for switching across is actually to create new credit packs, new membership plans, and re-issue the membership. You can modify existing credit packs and membership plans if you know their usage doesn’t extend beyond what you’re trying to change – and therefore just re-issue the memberships.
- Create new credit packs with a validity period of 28 days for use with the new membership. Configure their session and venue access accordingly. Give them a meaningful name to differentiate them from the previous credit type (E.g., if the former credit was “SGPT Sessions” perhaps something like “SGPT Sessions (28d)”)
- Archive the old membership types that had membership plans that issued credits monthly. Archiving the membership type stops it from being assigned to any new members, but does not mess-up any members that already have it assigned.
- Add the new membership type and set up the deliverables (I.e. the credits) that you wish to issue every 28 days.
- Add the corresponding membership plans to the membership type, with a subscription period of 28 days. Most clients select a repeated period of either 13 (for 12 month contracts), or 1 (for on-going contracts on auto-renew).
- At this stage you have a new membership with new payment plans and new credits. These are all good to be issued to new members. However, you still need to migrate existing members across to the new plans. This is the final step…
- Filter the members list to show those with the membership type you wish to replace. Open the first member and go to their “memberships” tab
- For the existing membership, make a mental note of when the next payment is due.
- Cancel the existing membership, selecting the “at renewal” (not immediate) option.
- Add the new membership, selecting the start date as being the date you memorised for when the previous membership ends. The previous membership will end it’s cycle with the old credit allocations, and the new one will start with the new credit allocations and cycle.
- Press the “next record” button (top-right) to move onto the next member that you need to update.
- Repeat until you have swapped all the old memberships across to the new one.
