Set up and manage memberships

A membership is a percentage discount on rentals, valid for a period of months, tied to a customer's email address. That is the whole feature — there is no free rental time, no punch card, no product-specific entitlement.

The email part is the thing to remember, and the admin repeats it in several places: "Memberships are linked to customers by email. The same email must be used when booking for the member discount to apply." A member who books with a different address gets no discount, and nothing tells them or you.

Everything lives under Memberships in the menu, which has four tabs: Settings, Checkout, Members and Purchases.

Step 1 — turn memberships on

1. Open Memberships and stay on the Settings tab.
2. Switch on Enable memberships.
3. Answer Where should memberships apply? — see the next section, this one matters.
4. Set Default member discount (%). Helper text: "Used for manually added/imported members without a product-specific discount. The discount applies to the entire booking total." Must be between 0 and 100, otherwise you get Please enter a discount between 0 and 100.
5. Set Default membership length (months) — between 1 and 120, otherwise Please enter a membership length between 1 and 120 months.
6. Press Save.

The other tabs stay greyed out until this is saved.

After saving, a Getting started panel appears telling you what is set up and what to do next. It also tells you about the emails Rentalbuddy created for you — see below.

Saving here does not make anything sellable yet. Enabling memberships and creating the membership product are two separate steps — operators regularly stop after the first one and wonder why customers see nothing. Until that product exists, no membership option appears in your booking window. The Getting started panel marks the second step for you — Sell memberships online, tagged Recommended — with a Create one link straight to the product form.

Step 2 — choose where memberships apply

Where should memberships apply? has two answers, and the choice shapes everything after it:

• All locations — "Members can use their discount when booking at any of your rental locations." One membership per person covers your whole account, including locations you add later. One membership product to maintain.
• Per location — "Members only get the discount at the location they signed up for. Add a separate membership for each additional location." A person who wants two locations needs two memberships, and you need one membership product at each location.

Pick All locations unless your locations are genuinely separate businesses to your customers.

Changing your mind later

You can switch freely until you create your first membership product. After that the setting locks and shows "Use the button below to change where memberships apply. Your membership products may need to be updated."

Press Change where memberships apply to open the migration dialog. Read it carefully — it does two very different things depending on the direction:

• Per location to All locations: you get Choose which membership products to keep, with "Uncheck duplicate products at other locations. Unchecked products will be removed." Anything you untick is deleted. This is the destructive direction; you are consolidating one product per location down to a single product.
• All locations to Per location: nothing is deleted. You are shown Your membership products and told that each product will now only be sold at the location shown, and that to offer the same membership elsewhere you go to Products, use Copy and choose where it should be sold.

Either way, the dialog says it plainly: "Existing members are not affected until you edit them individually." The change applies to products and to future purchases only.

Members who joined under the old setting keep working under the old setting and appear in the Members list with a Legacy chip. If you want one of them moved onto your current setting, open them with Edit and change Where should memberships apply? on that member. There is no bulk conversion.

Step 3 — let customers buy one

Customers buy a membership through a product, in the same booking window they use for rentals.

1. Go to Products and create a product with the type Membership. Choose the type carefully — it cannot be changed after the product is created.
2. Under Membership settings, fill in:
   • Membership price — what the customer pays. "Enter 0 for a free membership".
   • Rental discount (%) — what members actually get off their rentals. "Discount on rentals while membership is active. Enter 0 for no discount. The discount applies to the entire booking total."
   • Membership length (months) — how long it lasts. Leave it empty and it uses your account default, which the field tells you.
   • The VAT rate, as on any product.
3. Save the product.

If you are on Per location, create one membership product at each location that should sell memberships. On All locations, one product is enough — it is offered everywhere.

The product's Rental discount is what buyers get — with one trap. Setting the product's Rental discount (%) to 0 does not give members no discount: at booking time they fall back to your account's Default member discount (%) instead, which is normally only a fallback for members you add by hand or import. If you truly want a discount-free membership, set both the product's rental discount and the account default to 0.

If you try to create a membership product before choosing a coverage mode, you are told Set up where memberships apply on the Memberships page before creating a membership product.

The Checkout tab

By default, buying a membership asks for the same information as making a booking: "Customers will see the same custom checkout requirements as when making a booking. Name, email, and phone are always required. We also use the email to recognize members and apply their discount on future bookings."

If you need to ask something different when someone buys a membership, switch on Use separate checkout requirements for membership purchases and add your fields under Membership checkout requirements. Those fields apply only to membership purchases — "They do not affect regular bookings." There is a Preview so you can see what the customer will get.

What the customer sees

In your booking window, a Memberships option appears alongside normal booking, but only once you have at least one membership product that matches your coverage setting.

1. They enter their email first — Your email, "Enter your email to see membership options for your account."
2. They see your membership products, each showing the discount as "{{percent}}% off rentals", the price, and whether it Works at all locations or Works at this location only.
3. The button says Add, or, if they already have a membership, Extend ("Extends your membership by {{months}} months.") or Switch ("Replaces your current membership."). Someone with an active membership also sees a banner telling them what they have and until when.
4. They pay. The confirmation says Thank you for your membership! and explains that the discount will be applied automatically on future rentals when they use the same email address.

Extending stacks properly: buying again while still a member adds the months onto the existing end date rather than starting over.

The membership becomes active only when the purchase is actually paid. An abandoned or unpaid membership purchase creates no member.

How the discount reaches a booking

When a customer types their email in the normal booking cart, the widget checks it against your members and shows a chip with the member discount. Rentalbuddy checks the discount again when it calculates the booking's price, so it cannot be faked, and it only applies if the membership is valid for the location being booked.

On the booking in admin, it appears in the price summary as Membership discount (10%) — the percentage in brackets is the member's rate.

If a member also enters a promo code, both apply, one after the other rather than added together. A 10% membership plus a 10% code on 1000 gives 810, not 800.

Membership purchases themselves are ordinary orders in the system but are kept out of your operational booking lists — there is nothing to hand out and nothing to return.

Emails

When you first enable memberships, Rentalbuddy creates two emails for you: "one when a membership is purchased, and one 7 days before it expires. They're ready to use — change them anytime under Email settings, or leave them as they are."

• The purchase confirmation goes out as soon as the membership purchase is paid.
• The expiry reminder is created with a 7-days-before default, but you can change the timing under Email Settings. You can even send it after expiry instead (After membership expiry) as a "welcome back" nudge. It is rescheduled automatically whenever the membership changes, and dropped if the membership is switched off or deleted.

Validity and price — how they really work

Every purchased membership runs from its purchase date. The length comes from the product's Membership length (months) (or your account default), counted from the day the customer pays — two people buying the same product on different days get different end dates. There is no way to sell a membership that ends on a fixed calendar date ("valid through next May" for everyone). If you need that, set the date by hand instead:

• Add the members yourself, one by one or via Import CSV, with the Valid until date you want.
• Or sell online and then edit each buyer's Valid until on the Members tab — purchased memberships can be edited just like manual ones.

Changing the product's price or discount affects new purchases only. The price is charged once, at the moment of purchase — existing members keep the price they paid and are never charged again, so raising the price later touches nobody who already bought. The discount works the same way: it is copied onto the membership at purchase, so changing the product's Rental discount (%) later does not change existing members. To adjust an existing member, edit them individually on the Members tab.

A membership stops giving a discount when its Valid until passes. Exactly when depends on how the member was created: members you added by hand or imported are covered through the whole of that day, while a purchased membership ends at the same time of day it was bought. Nothing else needs to happen; there is no renewal charge and no automatic extension. Buying again before it expires adds the new period onto the existing end date; after it has expired, a new purchase simply starts from that day.

One thing regularly confuses operators: the Status column on the Members tab shows only whether you have switched that member on or off. An expired membership still reads Active there. To see expiry at a glance, use the Customers list, where the Member column shows Yes with Until and the date beside it, or Expired with the date underneath, or Deactivated with a Manually deactivated note.

Adding members by hand

Useful when someone joined outside your online checkout — paid you in cash, or came over from a paper list.

1. Open the Members tab.
2. Press Add member.
3. Enter their Email. This is what links them to a customer: "We link members to customers by email. The customer must use this same email when booking to receive their discount."
4. On Per location accounts, choose the Location.
5. Adjust Rental discount (%) if this person should differ from your default.
6. Check Valid until — it is prefilled with today plus your default membership length.
7. Press Save.

If the email does not belong to an existing customer yet, a customer record is created for it automatically.

To add many at once, use Import CSV. The dialog shows the exact format for your coverage setting — either email, validUntil (YYYY-MM-DD, optional), discount % (optional) or, per location, email, siteId, validUntil, discount %. Notes worth having before you paste:

• One member per line, no header row.
• Leaving the date out gives 12 months from today — a fixed default; your Default membership length setting is not used on imports.
• The per-location format needs the location's internal ID, which the dialog does not list for you — adding those members one at a time is often quicker for a handful.
• You get Created {{count}} member(s). and, if some rows failed, a count of errors.

Seeing who has a membership

Members tab — everyone who has one, with Name, Email, Location (or All locations), Added via (Purchase or Manual entry), Discount, Valid until, Status and Actions. Search with Search members. Tick rows to Export or Print them. Click a row to jump to that customer.

• The switch in Status turns a member's discount off without deleting them.
• Edit changes their discount, expiry or email.
• The delete action asks "Are you sure you want to remove {{email}} as a member?"

Purchases tab — every membership someone bought, with Purchase date, Customer, Location, the amount and Payment status. This is the tab for "what did memberships bring in".

Customers — the Member, Applies to and Discount columns show membership status right in your customer list, and the Member filter narrows it to Active, Expired, Deactivated or No.

Common situations

A member says they got no discount. Nine times out of ten they booked with a different email address. Check the email on the booking against the email on the Members tab. There is no way to apply a membership to a booking afterwards from admin — refund the difference manually if you want to honour it.

The membership expired but still shows Active. That is the Status switch, not the expiry. Look at Valid until, or at the Member column in Customers.

A member changed email address. Edit the member and change the email there. This also updates their customer record, so everything stays linked.

Two people want to share a membership. They would have to share an email address, which then also merges them into one customer record. Not recommended.

A membership ended up on the wrong customer. It cannot be moved: "Memberships cannot be moved between customers. Delete this membership and add a new one for the correct customer."

I want to stop selling memberships but keep existing members. Switch Enable memberships off. You are told what happens: "Memberships are disabled. Existing members are unchanged; re-enable in Settings to offer new sign-ups."

A member should get a different percentage from everyone else. Open them on the Members tab and set their own Rental discount (%).