Selling memberships before opening

If you're opening a new gym/studio/health facility then you may like to sell memberships before you open your doors.  This article runs over how to do that.

Setup

There are many different ways of charging before opening your doors.  The most common ones are:

  • You charge a month in advance and then the membership starts when you open
  • You charge a deposit to hold a place at your new gym/studio
  • You charge an upfront 3/6/12 month amount which goes towards the customer's membership

For these cases you can contact our support team and request an option for new gyms that means you can charge new customers but their membership time doesn't start until you open.

You could also achieve this by scheduling memberships to start on a certain date but in our experience delays with opening dates are common during the build phase. By enabling the option this can be left open ended.

You then sell memberships as normal by using the Settings -> Links & Code -> New Customers link.  Customers make an initial payment but no further charges occur until you open.

You can set this option on up to 2 months in advance of opening (any further please contact support).


Here is and example of how it would work if you have a prorated membership:

  • Membership set to ongoing, 1st of Month payment, prorated
  • Client pre-pays in pre-launch period say May 10th - this takes payment immediately and charges client for a full month
  • Gym opens (go live date) June 15th - no charge for client
  • July 15th there will be a prorated charge for the remainer of July
  • August 1st, full payment comes out

Note that if you have a membership set up with a 'free' prorated period, this will still charge the customer when in pre-launch mode the full price of the membership.

Customer changes

Before opening some of your customers might want to make changes to what they've signed up for.

  • For pauses you should note the customer and once you open and start memberships they can be paused.
  • For changes you should cancel the old membership, add a credit note to their account for the amount they originally paid, and then add a new membership to their profile.  If the new plan is more expensive they will be charged the difference.  If it's less expensive they will have a credit note on their account for the difference.  This will be used towards their next months payment.

Before opening

Make sure you contact support on day of opening.  They can then turn the option off so signups work as normal and start all your customers memberships.

If your pre-opening customers get a lower price for their membership you can create a plan just for them.  When you then open you can change that plan to Restricted so new customers can't see it

Related Articles