Membership and Class Pack limits
Many memberships and class packs have usage limits, either as part of the product itself or to ensure fair use of your facilities. For example a membership offering 3 class per week, or an unlimited membership with at most 2 visits per day. This article runs over how to setup those limits
Configuring limits for passes
A pass by its very nature is limited - it allows a certain number of sessions before the pass can no longer be used Depending on the pass you may also specify a type that can be booked into:
- Class packs can be used to book into any class and cannot be limited by type
- Space rental packs can be used to book any room and cannot be limited by type
- Service packs are restricted to a specific service that you choose on creation
To setup additional limits on passes, such as limiting class packs to a certain class or limiting the number of times a pack can be used each day, you will need to create an advanced rule
Configuring limits for plans
When creating a plan you get an option to add usage limits to that plan. Generally speaking it's a good idea to add some limits or the plan will be unlimited and the customer can book as many sessions as they like (subject to any advanced limits you may create)
When creating a limit you get to choose the amount, the classes/services it's limited to and a period of time over which it is checked. For example below we've limited customers to 1 Crossfit class per day and 13 Mobility or Sweat classes per charge period (an explanation on charge period is below):
In the second rule the two classes together means they could do 13 Mobility, 13 sweat or any combination of the two as long as it's less than 13 overall (eg 6 mobility, 7 sweat). If you want to limit them to up to 13 mobility classes and up to 13 sweat classes (ie they could do a total of 26 overall) then you would create two separate rules.
A simple way to remember this is OR vs AND. If the customer can attend 13 mobility classes OR 13 sweat classes (or any combination) then the wording is OR and they go in the same rule. If they can attend 13 mobility classes AND 13 sweat classes the rule is AND they go in different rules.
A more complex case is "of which" rules. For example:
9 overall classes of which 3 can be CrossFit. You would set this up as two rules:
a) 9 on CrossFit or Sweat classes
b) 3 on CrossFit
The effect would be they could book 9 classes but soon as they hit 3 on CrossFit the second rule would kick in. That's because although the rules are AND (as you would expect the second rule to be in addition to the first), the fact the class is in both means the second rule will hit its limit first. All rules must pass to allow a booking.
9 parent classes of which 3 can be other classes would be setup as:
a) 9 on Parents, Sweat and CrossFit
b) 3 on CrossFit and Sweat
Again the second rule stops excessive booking here due to the same classes being used, despite it initially seeming to be an AND rule.
Finally the period of time can be set to:
- Day - the limits are assessed over a day. For example in the screenshot above customers will be able to do at most 1 Crossfit class per day
- Week - the limits are assessed over a week. For example you limit a customer to 3 sessions per week
- Month - the limits are assessed over a calendar month. For example you get 13 classes per month
- Charge period - some memberships are charged on a day other than the 1st each month - eg 15th. In these case you could make monthly limits line up with a calendar month (ie 1st-31st) or when they pay (15th-14th of next month). The "month" option should be used for calendar limits and the "charge period" option for lining up with when the customer pays.
The charge period option is also handy for fixed length memberships. For example if you charge people £100 for a 6 week intro and you want to limit them to 27 classes over that period then you can do that with the charge period option as they're just charged once at the start. Equally if you charge people every 3 months for a year you can setup limits that apply every 3 months
To setup additional limits on plans, such as limiting waitlist or applying limits across multiple products, you will need to create an advanced rule
Advanced limits
Whilst the plan and pass limits allow you to create limits for most cases most of the time, there are a few situations that require advanced limits creating. In particular advanced rules allow you to create rules for waitlists, to control if late cancels/no shows count and to setup rules for accessing different locations (multi-location facilities only). They can also be a bit quicker to setup if you have the same rule that applies to lots of products (set it up here once rather than apply to each plan you create)
Advanced rules are configured under Settings -> Event Options -> Advanced Limits and look like this:
They work the same as limits created under plans but have additional options:
- You can choose limits that apply to multiple products in one place
- You can choose whether limits just apply to bookings, waitlists or both. For example a limit of 3 for bookings would allow 3 bookings and unlimited waitlists. Whereas a combined bookings/waitlist option would mean customers could make up to 3 bookings, up to 3 waitlists, or any combination of the two
- You can choose whether limits include late cancels and no shows count towards the limit amount
Advanced rules do not need every field entering. An empty field means it does not apply to this rule. So if you didn't choose any classes for example then it would apply to all classes you offer. Equally if you didn't enter any passes/plans it would apply to all products you sell.
Combining all these options you can easily create advanced options for usage limits. For example the following rule limits those on the Unlimited membership to book or waitlist on 2 Pilates classes each day but does not count any no-shows or late cancels.
Multi-location facilities
If you have multiple locations then you'll get two additional options on the rules. The first is for customers home location and then second for where the limits apply to. As previous rules if you leave these fields blank then all customers will be included in the rule regardless.
The screenshot below shows an example of limiting customers at your original studio to attend at most 3 classes per month as the new studio.
