Subscriptions and payment plans

Subscriptions are a great way to encourage repeat users and help you plan your activity capacity in advance.

Here's what we'll cover:

• Setting up subscription plans
• Creating a subscription ticket
• Managing user subscriptions and user cancellations
• Understanding how users manage their subscriptions

We have also created a few real-life examples using the Subscription functionality. You can read them here.

Please note: Subscription payments are processed via Stripe, which charges an additional 0.5% transaction fee on top of its usual card processing fee for recurring payments. Pembee does not charge extra for Subscription payments.

Setting up Subscription Plans

In Admin/ Subscriptions, you can create new subscription plans.

There are several fields to configure.

• Name: Name of the subscription plan shown to users
• Description: You can add additional details such as cancellation policy, coverage of the plan, etc.
• Initial payment: A one-off setup fee to take out the subscription. It will be charged each time a new subscription is purchased during the checkout process, usually one hour after the subscription booking is completed. Note: Initial payment is akin to a joining fee or admin fee, and it does not entitle the subscriber to join your activity immediately. To allow subscribers to join mid-month, you need to set up a cover fee when you create a new Subscription Ticket (see next section).
• Payment Schedule Type:
  • Regular: The same amount is charged on the 1st of every month. The subscription plan can have an end date (also on the 1st which will cover the remainder of the month). If there is no end date, the plan will continue indefinitely. It will run until the user or administrator cancels it.
  • Fixed Schedule: a schedule that charges over a fixed number of months, but can be different amounts and can skip certain months.
• Subscription start date restriction: When enabled, this setting will prevent users from subscribing to this plan after the first payment date. For example, if the first payment date is 1 October for this subscription plan, any subscription tickets that use this subscription plan will only be available to purchase before 1 October. This ensures that users always start their subscription at the beginning of the payment schedule. Helpful when you are trying to create a payment plan that spreads the payment across multiple months and don't want users to skip the first few payments!
• User cancellations: Set whether you allow users to cancel the subscription themselves, and if so, the required minimum notice period. Users will only be allowed to cancel the subscription outside this notice period. For example, if you set a notice period to be 3 days, a user will be able to cancel the subscription between 1st and 28th October, and will not be charged from 1 November onwards.

Creating a Subscription Ticket

Now that you have created subscription plans, you can create activity tickets that refer to these subscription plans. Multiple activities can link with the same subscription plan.

To add a new subscription ticket, go to Admin/ Activities, either click Edit to edit an existing activity or click Create new to create a new activity. In Step 3 tickets, you will be able to add a new subscription ticket. Please note that discount rules and discount codes do not apply to subscription tickets. If you wish to offer a discounted fee, please create a separate subscription plan.

By default, any attendees who bought a subscription ticket will be able to join all sessions in this activity from the beginning of next month. If you want to allow mid-month booking, toggle the Allow mid-month bookings button and configure a Cover fee per session. For example, if there are 3 more sessions this month with a cover fee of £10 per session, £30 will be charged immediately to cover the remaining sessions for this month, and the subscription ticket will come into effect on the 1st of next month.

Managing User Subscriptions and User Cancellation

The Admin/ Subscriptions/ User subscriptions tab provides you with an overview of all user subscriptions including details such as:

• Subscribing user and attendee details
• Subscription plan
• Assign and unassign activities
• Status of the subscription

To manage an individual user subscription, you can click on the subscription number to expand the details of a particular user subscription. There are three actions you can perform on the individual user subscription page.

1. Cancel subscription

When you click Cancel subscription, you will choose one of the three options regarding how to handle the remaining sessions assigned to this subscription.

2. Assign and unassign activities

You can assign a new activity that has a subscription ticket using the same subscription plan. The attendee in this subscription will be booked into all assigned activities.

You can also click on the empty area of each assigned activity to "unassign" an activity.

Tips: Bulk assign a new activity to a group of user subscriptions.

In User subscription tab, you can use the filter to filter the relevant group of user subscriptions. Click the empty box in the header row to select all items on this page, and then click "Select items from all pages". You can then assign new activity to all user subscriptions.

3. View payment history and issue refunds

The payment section contains all the payments associated with this user subscription. You can click on each individual payment to view the invoice, transactions history (charges and refunds) or issue refunds.

Understanding how users manage their subscriptions

In My account area, users will be able to see the subscriptions they have purchased and cancel them according to the cancellation terms you have set up.

If the subscription setting allows user cancellation, outside the minimum notice period, users can click Cancel subscription button to stop any further payments. The attendee booked into any activities associated with this subscription will be removed from any sessions from next month (they will still be booked into sessions occurring this month).

Users can also change the default payment method, or add a new card in the payment method section.