A standard membership renews forever and gives its benefit to everyone on the booking. That is the right shape for a discount club. It is the wrong shape for a gym-style pass — one person, one visit a day, sold for a season.
This page covers the four settings that turn a tier into that second thing. Each one works on its own; use only the ones you need.
| You want | Setting | Where |
|---|---|---|
| The benefit covers the member, not their whole party | Member discount (not credits) | Benefits tab |
| One visit a day, no more | Usage cap on the member discount | Benefits tab |
| Bring a friend free once a month | Guest discount + its own usage cap | Benefits tab |
| Only runs October to April | Seasonal membership | Billing tab |
| 30 days' notice before somebody can leave | Notice period | Billing tab |
The one decision that matters most: discount or credits?
This trips up nearly everybody, so settle it before touching anything else.
Credits (also called packs or punch passes) are a balance. A 12-pack holds twelve bookings. When a member books three spots, three credits come off — because that is what a pack is for. Somebody can buy a pack and bring their whole family on it.
A discount applies to one seat only — the member's own. Book three spots and two of them pay. There is no way to make a discount cover a second person, which is exactly why it is the right tool for a personal membership.
Rule of thumb. If you would be annoyed to see one membership cover four people, you want a discount, not credits. Set the discount to 100% off and you have a pass: the member's seat is free, everyone else's is not.
Leave Credits switched off on a gym-style tier. A tier with both will apply both.
Limiting a benefit: usage caps
A 100% discount with nothing else set is unlimited — a member could book the sauna six times on a Saturday, free. A usage cap puts a ceiling on how often the benefit applies.
Find it on the Benefits tab, underneath the discount you want to limit.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Count | How many times the benefit may be used |
| Period | Day, week, month, or year |
| Counts by | Booking for the member's own discount; Guest seat for the guest discount |
"Unlimited access, once a day" is 1 / day / booking.
Over the cap, the booking still goes through
When somebody has used their allowance, we do not block the booking. It simply prices at the normal rate, and the member is told why:
You've already used this benefit for today.
Turning down a sale reads as a bug to the customer and costs you money. Charging for it does neither.
Periods are counted on the visit date
A cap of one per day means one visit per day of service, not one booking per day of purchase. A member who sits down on Monday evening and books Tuesday's and Wednesday's sessions gets both — they are different days on the water, or in the sauna.
The member's cap and the guest's cap are separate
They run on independent counters. "My own visit once a day" and "a free friend once a month" never eat into each other.
Bring a friend free
Turn on Guest discount, set it to 100%, then:
| Field | Value for "one free friend a month" |
|---|---|
| Max guests per booking | 1 |
| Usage cap — count | 1 |
| Usage cap — period | Month |
| Usage cap — counts by | Guest seat |
The month is the calendar month. An unused friend pass does not roll over into the next month — it is an allowance, not a balance.
The friend must be on the member's own booking. Somebody booking their own separate slot is a separate booking with no member on it, and nothing there identifies them as anyone's guest.
Guests who are not free
You do not have to make the guest free. A guest discount can also be a percentage off, or a flat per-seat rate, and you can override that rate per item or per asset type — so a member's guest pays $17.50 for a paddleboard and $30 for a sauna session. Age-based bands are available too, for a child rate.
Seasonal memberships
A seasonal tier only exists between two dates each year. Switch on Seasonal membership on the Billing tab.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Season starts / ends | The two dates. The window may cross New Year — October 1 to April 30 is a single seven-month season |
| Season label | Optional. Shown to members, e.g. "2026-2027 Winter Season" |
| At the end of the season | End the membership, or keep billing straight through |
| Final billing cycle | Prorate to the season's last day, or charge the full cycle |
| Sign-ups outside the season | Block, defer, or allow |
The editor reads your settings back to you in plain language underneath the dates. If that sentence is not what you meant, the dates are wrong.
At the end of the season
End the membership is the usual choice. On the season's last day the membership stops, billing stops, and benefits stop. Nobody has to cancel anything — not the member, not you. To come back next season they buy the membership again.
Keep billing straight through turns the season into a display window only: the membership renews all year. Choose this if the dates are about when people join, not when the product exists.
The final billing cycle
A monthly membership rarely lands its last renewal exactly on the season's last day. Somebody billed on the 10th has a cycle running April 10 to May 10, and the season shuts on April 30.
- Prorate — they are charged for April 10-30 only, twenty of thirty-one days. This is the default and it is what most members expect.
- Charge the full cycle — they pay for the whole month and access ends April 30.
The invoice records both numbers when it is prorated, so the full price and the amount actually charged are both on the record.
Sign-ups outside the season
| Option | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Don't sell it | The tier is unavailable out of season. A winter pass is not for sale in July. This is the default |
| Sell now, start at the season | Take the money in September, start the membership October 1. Good for presales |
| Sell and bill immediately | Ignore the window entirely |
Which season a membership belongs to
A membership belongs to the season it started in, and ends at that season's close. Somebody who joins on November 4, 2026 ends on April 30, 2027 — not on April 30, 2028. Joining part-way through is fine; they just get a shorter season.
Notice periods
On the Billing tab, under cancellation: Notice period (days).
Leave it at 0 and a cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, which is how every membership has always worked.
Set it to 30 and a cancellation takes effect on whichever comes later:
- the end of the period they have already paid for, or
- 30 days from the day they cancelled.
Worked example. A member billed on the 1st cancels on March 20 with a 30-day notice period. Their paid period ends April 1; the notice runs to April 19. April 19 wins. They are billed on April 1 for April, prorated to the 19th if the tier prorates, and their access ends on the 19th.
Notice never runs past the end of the season. A member who cancels on April 20 of an October-April season ends on April 30, not May 20 — the season was going to end them anyway.
The member sees the exact end date in the portal before they confirm the cancellation, along with how the notice period produced it. Being surprised by a charge after cancelling is the single most common membership complaint, and this is what prevents it.
Notice and minimum commitment are different things
A minimum commitment stops somebody cancelling at all until they have been a member for N months. A notice period never stops a cancellation; it sets when the cancellation lands. You can use both.
Staff cancelling on a member's behalf can waive the notice.
Worked example: a sauna membership
The setup for a gym-style sauna pass — unlimited use, once a day, one free guest a month, October through April, 30 days' notice.
General
- Name it, describe it, pick the locations it covers.
Pricing
- Billing cycle: Monthly
- Price: whatever you charge
Benefits
- Credits: off — a pack would let one member cover four people
- Member discount: 100%, restricted to the sauna items (both the 45-minute and the 75-minute session, if you sell both — a restriction that lists only one silently charges full price for the other)
- Member discount usage cap: 1 / day / booking
- Guest discount: on, 100%, max 1 guest per booking
- Guest discount usage cap: 1 / month / guest seat
Billing
- Seasonal membership: on, October 1 to April 30
- At the end of the season: End the membership
- Final billing cycle: Prorate
- Sign-ups outside the season: Sell now, start at the season if you want to presell in September, otherwise Don't sell it
- Notice period: 30 days
What a member gets: the sauna free once a day all season, one friend free each month, billed monthly from October, and it stops on April 30 without anybody having to do anything.
Things worth checking before you launch
- List every item the benefit covers. A 100% discount restricted to one of your two sauna durations charges full price for the other, quietly.
- Read the sentence under the season dates. It says what the system heard. It is the fastest way to catch October-to-April entered as April-to-October.
- Decide prorate or full before you sell one. Changing it later does not re-cut invoices that already went out.
- A cap of one per day is not one per booking. Somebody booking a three-person slot uses one day's allowance and pays for the other two seats.
Related
- Memberships -- creating tiers, managing members, statuses, data export
- Member portal -- what members see and can do themselves