Set up and publish participant subscriptions

Set up and publish participant subscriptions

Coming soon: participant subscriptions

If you are interested, contact our support team. Activation for individual accounts may already be possible.

A plan groups together a participant subscription’s conditions. Create separate plans for substantively different products, such as an annual membership, a monthly subscription and a 10-use pass. The basic distinction is explained under Participant subscriptions.

Prepare activation, permissions and design

1. Under Settings → Plugins, activate the Memberships & Passes plugin. Conditions and any trial period are provided in Plugin Manager.
2. Give the responsible admins write permission for membership plans. For assignments and personal changes, they additionally need the corresponding permissions for customer memberships. Check Admins and their user permissions.
3. Configure an appropriate VAT rate. Even a free plan requires a valid tax assignment for publication.
4. Check the purchase design: The Membership catalogue · Buy page needs a form and usable published legal texts. In the default design, the My memberships widget must be present on the completion page. A separate purchase design does not replace this customer area in the default design.

The design and individual widgets are described under Design Manager: Subscriptions and customer area.

For joint course and subscription purchases, also configure the booking view, shopping cart navigation and completion action in the design used.

Create a new plan

1. Open Memberships & Passes and select New membership.
2. Enter a name and description in Translations. For multiple languages, switch using the language chips. The name in the organisation’s language is mandatory; add the other booking languages so that the customer view is clear.
3. Under Sales, enter selling price, currency and VAT. Select the default design or a custom purchase design. The selling price may be 0.00.
4. Under Validity, select exactly one of the models in the following table.
5. Under Scope & Benefit, specify which offers the entitlement covers and which discount it grants.
6. Check Renewal & Communication and save the draft. Publish the plan only after reviewing its public appearance.

Define validity

Model	Your input	What to consider
Fixed period	Start and end including time	The end must be after the start and still in the future at publication. A purchase before the start initially receives the status Scheduled after payment.
From activation (relative duration)	Positive whole number and unit: days, months or years	The term begins upon activation. Purchases that require payment await payment confirmation; months and years are calculated according to the calendar. With a duration of one month, a membership activated on 31 January ends on the last valid day in February.
Number of uses	Positive whole number	The entitlement ends when its balance is exhausted. This model has no additional fixed term and no automatic renewal. The pass guide explains consumption and codes.

Align annual entitlement with the start of a month

From activation → 1 year starts upon actual activation. It does not automatically align every purchase with the first day of the next month. If the entitlement starts on the 17th of a month, the annual duration is calculated from that time.

If everyone should receive the same calendar period, use Fixed period with an explicit start and end, for example from 1 January 2027 at 00:00 to 1 January 2028 at 00:00. A purchase already paid before the start initially remains scheduled. This model defines a shared period; it does not individually move the start of each later purchase to the first day of the next month.

The next period of an automatic renewal starts at the previous validity end. Therefore prepare the desired transition before a subsequent period is created. An authorised term correction can change the end of a personal time-based membership if its prerequisites are satisfied. It is not an automatic rounding rule for new purchases and does not retrospectively change the original start or agreed price.

Plan scope and discount separately

Select all offers, specific categories or individual offers. For a category, the offers beneath it are covered. If you later move an offer, check the effect on future bookings. An entitlement for category A does not automatically cover an offer in category B.

For the benefit, select a percentage from 0 to 100 or a fixed amount with currency. A fixed discount in CHF is not automatically converted to EUR. A discount can reduce the eligible item’s price to no less than zero. The subscription’s selling price is independent of this benefit.

Example: Member rate without an additional discount

An association sells membership for CHF 120 per year. The plan covers all offers and grants a 0 percent discount. A course has a regular price category at CHF 100 and a member price at CHF 70. Link only the member price to the plan under Prerequisite → Required membership. Eligible people can select CHF 70; the plan does not reduce this CHF 70 again.

Example: 10-use pass for fully covered admissions

A studio creates a usage pass with ten uses and a 100 percent benefit for the Open training category. A suitable training admission is covered by one use. Other offer categories and additional services receive no blanket discount from this.

Configure renewal and parallel memberships

For time-based memberships, you can enable Allow automatic renewal and Automatically renew new purchases by default. For a fixed period, also specify the duration of the subsequent period. Reminder days range from 0 to 365. Bear in mind that the subsequent period may already be prepared with an invoice at the reminder time.

Use Allow multiple simultaneous assignments per customer to decide whether a person may hold the same plan in parallel. If disabled, a payment still outstanding or a scheduled membership also prevents another simultaneous purchase or assignment of that plan.

Automatic renewal creates a new period with payment processing. By itself, it does not confirm a successful credit card charge. Details are provided under Renewal, payment and cancellation.

Example: Annual membership as a course prerequisite

An organisation wants to offer its courses only to people with a valid annual membership. The membership should provide access; people pay for the course separately.

1. Create a time-based plan with From activation → 1 year, the desired selling price and a 0 percent benefit. For a shared membership year, choose a fixed period instead.
2. Assign the scope to the intended course category and configure the desired renewal. Publish the fully prepared plan.
3. In each relevant offer, open the price categories. Create or edit an additional price category and select this plan under Required membership. This prerequisite is unavailable for the standard price. If regular public price selection should offer only member prices, hide the standard price and check the prerequisite for every other price option. Otherwise, an unrestricted alternative price remains selectable without a subscription.
4. Using the same participant, check an active, paid membership, a period that has not yet begun and an expired membership. Also check the joint subscription/course purchase if you offer it.
5. Before expiry, check the subsequent period under Renewal and payment. A prepared invoice alone does not extend usable entitlement beyond the paid validity end.

While the current paid period remains valid, it can continue to provide entitlement even if the next payment is still outstanding. After it expires, the subsequent period must itself be usable. Automatic renewal therefore does not guarantee that every future booking will be unlocked. Entitlement at the time of booking is decisive; this does not imply a check based solely on the later course date.

Also check any enabled waiting list process. The hidden standard price remains in the system and can be used as a fallback in special processes if no other price is available. Therefore also check a fully booked offer and an exhausted member price with a person who has no subscription. Hiding the regular price option alone does not create an account-wide membership restriction for every special process.

Published, internal, draft or archived

Status	Use
Draft	You are preparing the plan. It is not sold publicly through the regular process and is unavailable for new administrative assignments.
Published	Once validation has passed, the plan is available for purchase in the catalogue and for administrative assignment.
Internal use	The plan is available for administrative assignments and price conditions, but does not appear as a public purchase offer.
Archived	The plan is closed to new purchases and assignments. Existing personal entitlements remain traceable and continue under their purchased conditions. New subsequent periods require a published or internal plan that permits renewal.

Use Withdraw to remove a published product from sale. This does not end any existing personal membership. For an individual person, use customer management.

Fully prepare legal texts for subscription purchases

Select and publish the intended texts before releasing the plan. Link them in the actual purchase design on Membership catalogue · Buy and configure the desired mandatory confirmation for each text. Check every active language and access as both a new and already logged-in person.

When adding your first subscription-specific legal text, the complete selection is important: the subscription purchase template takes priority over texts previously inherited from the booking summary. Passing publication validation does not prove a complete check of all languages or evidence for the joint course/subscription cart. The steps and evidence limitations are described under Subscription legal texts and confirmations.

Use publication validation

1. In the plan, check the notices under Still to be completed before publication:.
2. Correct errors in validity, organisation-language name, VAT and scope.
3. For design errors, open the indicated setting. Add the missing form, legal text or My memberships in the design specified there.
4. Add the other languages reported as warnings. A missing name in an additional language is a warning; a missing name in the organisation’s language prevents publication.
5. Publish the plan and check catalogue, purchase, payment and customer area using an example person.

Validation also applies after changes to a plan already published. If a change cannot be saved, check the reported prerequisite and reload the current state if other admins have made changes in the meantime.