Subscribe a customer
Goal
Start a customer paying — for a membership, or for anything else a billing plan sells — and let the payments be taken on their days without anybody remembering to.
Prerequisites
- You hold Sports & Leisure — receptionist or centre manager.
- The plan exists and is on sale (see Set up a billing plan).
Steps
- Open Sports & Leisure → Billing → Subscriptions and select New.
- Pick the Customer and the Billing plan. If it pays for a membership, pick the Membership too. Set Starts — today, or a later day.
- Save. The subscription is Pending: nothing is scheduled yet.
- Select Start. The subscription is Active, and its Instalments tab lists every payment of the first term with its Due date. Next payment and Term ends are filled in.
- That is all. Each instalment is taken on its day by the nightly billing run. To take one now — the customer is at the desk — open it and select Take payment.
Other things you can do from the subscription:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pause | Nothing is taken while it is paused. What falls due meanwhile is taken once it resumes. |
| Resume | Active again — or Past due, if a payment is still failed. |
| Renew now (under ⋯) | Starts the next term now: its payments are scheduled from the end of this one. |
| Cancel subscription | By the customer or by the centre. Everything still owed is cancelled; what was paid stays paid. |
What happens behind the scenes
The member is found from the customer: you do not pick it, and a membership that belongs to somebody else is refused. The price is copied from the plan when the subscription is created, so a later price rise reaches it only when it renews.
When the term ends, a subscription that renews moves to its next Term, and a membership it pays for is moved on to the new end. One that does not renew is Completed once everything is paid.
Once started, a subscription's customer, plan, dates and price do not change. To change them, cancel it and start another.
Troubleshooting
- "… is no longer sold." or "… is not sold until …" — the plan is inactive, or outside its Sold from–Sold until window on the start day.
- "That membership is somebody else's." — pick the customer's own membership.
- "A started subscription's customer, plan, dates and price are fixed." — cancel it and start another.