Memberships and billing
Membership types, pricing tiers, what a membership grants, and how access and billing are deliberately kept separate.
Memberships are how people belong to - and pay - your club. The model has three layers, and keeping them apart explains almost every behaviour you will meet later.
The three layers
- A membership type is the offer your club defines: "Senior", "Student", "Social". It says what the membership grants and how it can be paid for.
- A pricing tier sits under a type and sets an actual price and rhythm - £45 a month, £480 a year. One type can offer several, so a member picks monthly or annual without the club maintaining two separate memberships.
- A membership is what one person holds: their instance of a type, with their own start date, status and history.
Behind a paid membership there is also a subscription plan - the quiet engine that raises an invoice each billing period. You rarely interact with it directly, but it is why the next section matters.
Access and billing are separate
This is the idea worth internalising. A membership controls access - the role and groups someone gets. The subscription plan controls billing - when invoices are raised and money collected. They are related but not the same thing, and Rowbot lets them move independently.
That separation is what makes the awkward real-world cases expressible:
- Someone leaves at the end of the season but has paid to the end of the month: access ends now, billing ends at the period end.
- Someone is injured: freeze the membership so billing pauses while they keep their place.
- Someone moves from Novice to Senior mid-month: access changes today, billing changes at the next period, and the difference is prorated.
Whenever you cancel, freeze or switch, Rowbot shows you what will actually happen - which invoices will be voided, which are already being collected and cannot be stopped, and what the member will be charged next. Read that panel; it is the honest answer.
What a membership grants
A membership type is not only about money. It can also grant benefits:
- a role, which sets what the person can do - see Roles and permissions; and
- one or more groups to auto-join, so paying for a squad membership puts you in that squad - see Groups and squads.
Example. "Senior Membership" costs £45/month, grants the Member role and auto-joins the Senior Squad. When Priya's membership activates she becomes a member, lands in the squad, and starts seeing its outings - in one step.
How someone gets a membership
Two routes, depending on how your club works:
- An admin issues it. The common case: a committee member picks the person, the type and tier, when it starts, and how it is paid.
- The member joins themselves, through a registration form the club publishes. They pick a membership, fill in what the club asks for, and pay.
Either way the membership can start immediately, on a future date, or wait for approval - and if your club requires a Direct Debit before membership begins, it waits in Pending until the mandate exists, then activates itself.
From membership to money
Each billing period the subscription plan raises an invoice. What happens next depends on how the member pays:
- Collected automatically - by Direct Debit or a saved card, where your club's payment policy allows it. The member gets notice before the money moves.
- Paid by the member - they open the invoice and pay by card or bank.
Invoices are the unit of record throughout: what a member owes, what they have paid, what is overdue, and what your accounts see. If an invoice goes unpaid, your club's dunning settings decide how it is chased and what eventually happens to the membership.
Individual price adjustments
Sometimes one member pays something different - a coaching discount, a hardship rate, a family arrangement. Rather than inventing a membership type for every case, you attach an adjustment to their membership: an amount off, a percentage off, or a fixed price.
The base price is never overwritten. Each invoice records the full price and the adjustment separately, so the club can see what a discount costs it and account for it properly - and removing the adjustment simply restores the standard price. Adjustments can expire on a date or after a set number of invoices, and sensitive ones (a hardship rate, say) are hidden from the member's own invoice.
See Membership changes.
Member view vs committee view
- A member sees their own membership, what it includes, when it renews, what they owe and their payment history - and can pay outstanding invoices.
- The committee defines types and tiers, issues memberships, sets the payment policy, and oversees invoices and money across the club.
What's next
- Membership types and pricing - define the offer.
- Payment policy - which payment methods each kind of charge may use.
- Financials - invoices, payments and what needs attention.