Customizable membership makes it easy to manage customer memberships, offering discounts on materials and services. With options like deferred revenue and two payment methods — upfront or recurring — you can tailor memberships to fit your business needs and boost customer satisfaction.
Setup
What you need to get started
Before setting up membership types, start with the basics:
Setup permissions: Make sure to setup membership permissions for your office employees and technicians. Some of the main permissions that office users need:
Edit membership type
Edit recurring service type
Edit customer membership
Sell or renew a membership from customer or location
Access Dismiss button on Recurring Service Events page
Setup tasks: Setup the sale and renewal tasks for your membership in your pricebook
Configure items: Setup and configure your pricebook items to align with the membership type.
Account configuration is required. Please contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or Technical Support for details.
Quick start guide
After you setup the sale/renewal tasks and configure your pricebook items, you can now create your membership and recurring service types.
Create Membership Types
To get started, create a new membership type, which is the basic template for a membership you sell to customers. You can create multiple membership types for the various services you offer. To create membership types:
Go to the navigation bar and click Settings
> Invoicing > Membership Types.Click Create Membership Type.
The Create New Membership page opens.
In this window, you need to fill out 4 sections with the relevant information to create the membership type: Basics, Billing, Recurrences, and Summary.
Step 1: Fill out Basic information about the membership type
In this section, you need to fill out the membership name, membership tags, membership duration, and billing frequency.
Name: The membership type name is visible on customer estimates and invoices.
Membership tags: Add tags to quickly identify members on the customer record and on the service location record.
Duration and billing frequency details: Set how long the membership lasts and when you want to bill customers. You can create multiple duration and billing variations for a membership type.
Ongoing: The customer is billed periodically for the membership and there is no expiration date.
Fixed: Membership has an expiration date after which the customer can renew.
Billing Frequency: Select how often you want to bill for the membership (monthly, every other month, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually). Fixed-duration memberships can also be paid for upfront.
Discounts: Apply discounts for all services or you can set discounts by BU or by pricebook categories and subcategories.
Locations: Memberships can apply to one or all of a customer's service locations.
Step 2: Fill out Billing information
In this section, you must fill out the membership price, billing template, sale, and renewal tasks.
Create Prices: Set prices for selling and renewing memberships and ongoing billing. These prices are used for the pricebook items on membership invoices.
New Sale Task: New sale tasks are pricebook service items used to sell memberships. Adding a new sale task to an invoice activates the membership.
Renewal task: Renewal tasks are pricebook service items that renew fixed-duration memberships. Adding a renewal task to an invoice renews the membership.
Billing Template: The template includes a pricebook service item used to invoice customers based on the billing frequency of the membership.
Step 3: Setup Recurrences
In this section, you need to select Recurring Services and Revenue Recognition.
Recurring Services: Recurring services are the inspections, maintenance visits, or other services typically included with a membership. There are two ways to add recurring service types:
Add Existing Service: You can add recurring service types that are already selected in your Settings
> Invoicing > Recurring Service Types.Create New Service: Create a new recurring service type. For more, see Create a Recurring Service type.
Revenue Recognition: If you use accrual accounting, you can defer membership revenue and recognize portions of it as you perform recurring services. For more, see Set up Deferred Revenue.
Step 4: Review the Summary
After you complete setting up your membership type, the summary screen opens showing all the details of your membership type.
For more, see Create membership types.
Advanced setup
Upon creating the membership types, you need to determine the right billing and revenue recognition setup for each membership type.
To get an overview of the available billing and revenue recognition options, see Membership accounting options.
Step 1: Choose the membership billing option
There are multiple options for billing customers on the sold memberships. You can bill the customer upfront, or you can bill customers monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually.
Step 2: Choose the revenue recognition option
Several options are available to recognize the revenue driven from sold memberships. For each membership type you need to choose between recognizing the customer membership as income on the point of sale or as deferred revenue. For more, see Set up Deferred Revenue.
Use the Membership glossary and Membership concepts to understand the membership concepts and terminology.
Key workflows
Sell a membership
When selling a membership, there are several steps you can take to ensure the successful sale of a membership. To get a better understanding of how the membership cycle works, see Understanding the Memberships Sales Cycle.
Memberships give customers discounts on materials and services usually in exchange for a monthly fee. Find multiple methods of membership configuration, including options for deferred revenue. You can sell memberships to customers both from the office and mobile side. For more, see:
Sell membership add-ons
There are a few ways to sell memberships from the office side; your technicians can also sell them from the mobile side while onsite.
Manage membership types
Use membership types to include all the details you need to sell, renew, and bill memberships. Membership types include member discounts and help set up recurring service events for service visits included with the membership.
Create Recurring Service types
Set up recurring services to schedule regular service visits offered in memberships.
Manage membership recurring service events
Schedule recurring service events once the customer has an active membership. These events include service and customer details, making it easy for you to book them into jobs efficiently.
Process membership billing
Process payments for recurring billing using billing runs. That can be done by setting preferred payment methods on customer profiles and managing the billing process by setting up automatic billing rules.
Process recurring billing for memberships and service agreements
Manage automatic membership and service agreements billing rules
Expiring memberships and membership renewals
You can follow up on expiring memberships and create and send renewal membership estimates to customers.
Deferred revenue
Use deferred revenue to recognize part of a membership fee as income when you provide a recurring service included with the membership. In any given month, this recognized revenue balances the cost of providing these services, helping you manage cash flow and profitability.
Make changes to a customer's membership settings
You can make changes to the membership sold to customers such as the customer's billing information, revise recurring services, or make other changes.
Membership report guides
Keep track of memberships by running built-in reports, or create new custom membership reports.
You can also keep track of revenue recognition for each customer membership using these reports.
Manage Equipment
Attach and manage equipment for memberships following these workflows.
Additional membership features
See additional features offered with memberships.
Troubleshooting and FAQ
FAQ
Take a look at the top FAQs regarding Memberships.
Troubleshooting
Check out the top 10 troubleshooting articles for Memberships. Each article provides a clear, step-by-step solution.
What caused a scheduled event to occur after a membership expiration date?
What is the recommended workflow to create a new recurring service for a Job?
What is the process for adding a monthly billing option to an existing membership?
How do you switch a customer's membership billing from monthly to yearly?