Memberships

​

Introduction

Memberships let you offer recurring subscription plans that clients pay for on a regular billing cycle. Each plan includes one or more benefits — percentage discounts, included sessions, or unlimited access to selected services. Billing is handled automatically through Stripe, and clients can purchase, view, and manage their memberships through your online booking portal. This is ideal for building predictable recurring revenue and rewarding committed clients. For example, you might offer a “VIP Monthly” membership that includes 4 facial sessions per month plus 20% off all other services. Note: Memberships is a location-level feature. If you have multiple locations, you enable and configure plans separately for each one.

---

​

Key Features

• Flexible billing cycles: Choose from 9 frequencies — weekly, fortnightly, every 4 weeks, monthly, every 6 weeks, every 2 months, quarterly, every 6 months, or annually
• Customisable benefits: Each plan can include multiple benefits with discount percentages, optional session limits, and scope to specific services, whole bundles, or all services
• Automatic recurring billing: Stripe handles subscription billing, invoice generation, and payment retries automatically
• Online purchase: Clients can browse plans and subscribe through your online booking portal via Stripe Checkout
• Client self-service: Clients view their membership status, session usage, and next charge date in the My Membership portal
• Session tracking: For capped benefits, session counters track usage per billing cycle and reset automatically at renewal (or once per term on an instalment plan)
• Instalment plans: Let clients pay for a fixed course of services in instalments every 4 weeks over a 4/8/12-week term, with a minimum-term commitment — see Instalment plans
• Capacity limits: Optionally cap how many clients can be actively subscribed to a plan at once — see Capacity limits
• Pause and resume: Optionally allow team members to pause a client’s subscription temporarily and resume when ready
• Flexible cancellation: Cancel immediately or at the end of the current billing period (instalment plans have a minimum term — the current term completes first)
• Benefit redemption at checkout: Membership discounts are automatically applied when checking out appointments for matching services
• Terms and conditions: Attach versioned terms to plans — clients accept them at purchase time
• Automated notifications: Email and SMS notifications for activation, payment failures, and cancellation
• Dashboard enrolment: Enrol clients directly from the business dashboard without requiring them to purchase online
• Manual collection: Enrol members who pay at the till (cash or your own terminal) — Bella tracks renewals due and you record each payment (a 1% platform fee applies, billed on your Bella invoice)
• Archive and restore: Archive plans you no longer offer and restore them later if needed

---

​

How Memberships Work

1. You create a membership plan in Memberships — defining the name, price, billing cycle, and benefits
2. The plan is made available for online purchase or offered to clients by your team
3. A client subscribes — either online via Stripe Checkout or enrolled by a team member from their profile
4. After the first payment is confirmed, the membership activates and the billing period begins
5. Benefits apply automatically — when the client checks out for a matching service, the membership discount is applied
6. For capped benefits (e.g., “4 sessions per cycle”), session counters track usage and reset each billing cycle (or once per term on an instalment plan)
7. Billing continues automatically on the chosen cycle until the membership is paused, cancelled, or payment fails
8. If a payment fails, the membership moves to a Past Due status and the client is notified

---

​

Creating a Membership Plan

1. Go to Memberships in the sidebar
2. Click New Plan
3. Fill in the plan details:
   • Plan name (required): A descriptive name (e.g., “VIP Monthly”)
   • Description (optional): Additional details about what’s included
   • Price (required): The recurring subscription price
   • Billing cycle (required): How often the client is billed
   • Active: Toggle whether the plan is available for enrolment
   • Allow online purchase: Toggle whether clients can subscribe through your booking portal
   • Allow pause: Toggle whether team members can pause subscriptions on this plan from the dashboard
   • Maximum active subscribers (optional): Cap on how many clients can be subscribed at once — leave blank for unlimited. See Capacity limits
4. Add one or more benefits (at least one required)
5. Click Save

​

Benefits

Each benefit defines a specific advantage the plan offers. A plan can have multiple benefits. For each benefit, you configure:

• Label (required): A description shown to clients (e.g., “4 LED sessions per cycle”)
• Discount percentage: The discount applied (0–100%) — required if no session limit is set
• Session limit (optional): Maximum redemptions per billing cycle — leave blank for unlimited
• Services or bundles (optional): Which services and/or bundles this benefit applies to — leave blank for all services. Pick individual services, whole bundles, or a mix from the same picker. A bundle-scoped benefit covers that bundle directly — see the note below.
• Deposit for members (optional): Override the deposit policy for members on this benefit’s services. Leave as Use default to inherit the service/location policy, or choose No deposit, Require deposit, or Card on file — see Deposit for members below.

Common benefit patterns: You can combine multiple benefits in a single plan. For example, a plan could include “4 facial sessions per month” (100% off, 4 sessions, Facial service) plus “20% off everything else” (20% off, unlimited, all services).

​

Deposit for members

A membership can waive — or change — the upfront deposit your members pay when booking the services a benefit covers. This is separate from the discount: a benefit can give a partial discount and still skip the deposit. Set it per benefit:

• Use default — members follow the same deposit policy as everyone else (the service or location setting).
• No deposit — members book the covered services without paying a deposit, even when the benefit only discounts part of the price. Non-members are unaffected.
• Require deposit — members pay a specific deposit (a fixed amount or a percentage you set here), overriding the service/location amount.
• Card on file — members add a card to confirm their booking, with no deposit charged.

The policy is resolved at booking in the order membership → service → location, and it applies everywhere the deposit is read — online booking, the deposit reminder, the pay-deposit link, and the auto-cancel-unpaid-deposit job — so a member is never chased for a deposit their plan has waived. On the appointment, staff see a “No deposit required — waived by the client’s membership” note, so a membership waiver is clearly distinct from a manual one.

​

Billing cycles

​

Instalment plans (pay a package over a fixed term)

A payment plan lets a client pay for a fixed set of services in affordable instalments every 4 weeks instead of all upfront — useful for a defined course of treatments (for example, “2 Single Process + 1 Blonde+ over 12 weeks”). Choose a Payment plan of 4, 8, or 12 weeks on the plan editor and the plan behaves differently to an ordinary membership:

• Billed every 4 weeks in instalments. The Price you set is the per-instalment charge; the term total is that price × the number of instalments (a 12-week term = 3 instalments). The editor shows the total and instalment breakdown as you type.
• Services are granted once per term, not per instalment. The included sessions are available across the whole term (any time in the 12 weeks) and refresh once, at the start of the next term — they do not top up with each instalment.
• Auto-renews each term. At the end of the term the plan renews automatically for a new term on the card on file, unless the client cancels.
• Minimum-term commitment. The client is committed for the current term and can’t cancel partway through. They can switch off renewal at any time — the term’s remaining instalments still complete, then the membership ends at the end of the term.

Instalment plans are always billed every 4 weeks, can’t be paused, and don’t use a fixed billing day (they bill on the client’s enrolment day) — the editor sets these automatically. Enrol clients yourself from the dashboard or till, or turn on Allow online purchase to let clients join from your booking page. When a client buys an instalment plan online, checkout clearly states the term total, the instalment schedule and the minimum-term commitment, and asks them to acknowledge it before paying.

​

Editing a plan

You can update a plan’s name, description, price, billing cycle, and toggles at any time. When you change the price or billing cycle, the new pricing applies to new enrolments only — existing members continue on their current price until they renew or re-enrol. The same applies to a plan’s payment-plan term: changing it affects new enrolments only, and existing members keep the term they signed up to. Collection method (card-on-file vs manual) is not a plan setting — it’s chosen per member at enrolment and can’t be edited on the plan or on an existing member. To switch a member between the two, cancel their membership and re-enrol them on the other method. Benefits can also be updated. If the plan has active members, you’ll see a notice that existing members keep their current benefits until the next billing cycle.

​

Capacity limits

You can optionally cap the number of clients actively subscribed to a plan at once — useful for a founding-member tier limited to the first 50 sign-ups, or a high-touch plan capped to a number your team can actually service. Set Maximum active subscribers on the plan editor. Leave it blank for an unlimited plan (the default).

• Online purchase is blocked once the plan is full. The plan stays visible on your booking page with a “Fully subscribed” badge — it’s never hidden — but the Join button is disabled and a new online purchase can’t go through.
• Dashboard enrolment is only warned, never blocked. If a team member enrols a client (or moves a member onto a full plan) from the dashboard, they see a warning that the plan is at capacity but can still proceed — useful for a VIP exception or migrating clients from a paper system.
• The plan detail and plans list show “X of Y spots used” so you always know how full a capped plan is.
• Lowering the cap below the current number of subscribers is allowed. Existing members keep their membership; new online joins are simply blocked until the number drops back under the new cap through cancellations.

​

Archiving a plan

If you no longer want to offer a plan but need to keep it for reference:

1. Open the plan from Memberships
2. Click Archive
3. The plan is hidden from the main list and can no longer be sold

To view archived plans, use the Archived filter on the plans list. You can restore an archived plan at any time. Note: You can only permanently delete a plan that has been archived and has no active members.

---

​

Enrolling Clients

There are two ways a client can get a membership: online purchase or dashboard enrolment.

​

Online purchase (client self-service)

Clients can browse and subscribe to plans directly through your online booking portal. This requires:

• Memberships enabled in Settings > Memberships
• At least one active plan with Allow online purchase toggled on
• Stripe payments configured for your location

How it works:

1. The client visits the Memberships page on your online booking portal
2. They browse available plans, viewing benefits, pricing, and billing frequency
3. They click Join and are redirected to Stripe Checkout to complete payment
4. After payment, they see a confirmation page and receive a confirmation email
5. The membership activates once the first invoice is confirmed by Stripe

​

Dashboard enrolment (team member)

Team members can enrol clients directly from the business dashboard:

1. Open a client’s profile and go to the Memberships tab
2. Click Enrol
3. Select a plan
4. Review and accept the terms (if terms are attached to the plan)
5. Choose how the client will pay — Card on file (auto-charge) or Collect manually
6. Confirm the enrolment

With Card on file, a Stripe subscription is created and the client’s saved payment method is charged each cycle. The collection method is chosen when you enrol the client and is fixed for that membership — to move an existing member between card-on-file and manual, cancel their membership and re-enrol them on the other method. Card-on-file needs a card the client has already saved. Cards are always added by the client (securely, through Stripe) — your team can’t key one in. If the client doesn’t have a saved card yet, send them the add-a-card link (see Sharing signup & add-a-card links below), or let them buy the membership online, which saves their card as part of checkout. See also How Cards Get Saved.

​

Manual collection (cash, terminal, other)

Choose Collect manually when the client prefers to pay at the till — cash, your own EFTPOS terminal, or any other method outside Bella. No card is required:

• The first payment is collected at enrolment and the membership activates immediately
• Each cycle, the renewal appears in the Renewals due filter on the Members list, and you record the payment from the member’s page once the client has paid
• If a renewal isn’t recorded by its due date, the membership moves to Past Due and benefits stop until the payment is recorded

---

​

Sharing Signup & Add-a-Card Links

Your team can send clients a link to do the money steps themselves — they sign in securely and cards are always handled by Stripe, never entered by staff:

• Signup link — on Memberships, open a plan’s ⋮ menu and choose Copy signup link or Send signup link. The client opens it, signs in, and subscribes online — their card is saved and auto-charged each cycle. Shown only for plans with Allow online purchase on.
• Add-a-card link — on a client, open the ⋮ menu and choose Copy add-a-card link or Send add-a-card link. It takes the client to the Payment methods page in your online booking portal to save a card. Once saved, your team can enrol them on card-on-file or charge the card from the dashboard.

Send opens your Messages composer with the link pre-written — pick SMS or email and send. Copy puts the link on your clipboard to paste anywhere. Sending uses the Two-Way Messaging feature; copying is always available.

---

​

Managing Memberships

​

Membership statuses

Note: When a membership is active but set to cancel at the end of the current billing period, it displays an Ending indicator. The membership remains fully active with redeemable benefits until the period ends, at which point it transitions to Cancelled.

​

Recovering a Past Due membership

When a renewal can’t be collected, the membership moves to Past Due and benefits stop until it’s reactivated.

• Manual-collection memberships (cash, terminal, other): collect the payment from the client, then open the membership from the Members list and click Record payment to reactivate it. Overdue renewals are listed under the Renewals due filter.
• Card-on-file memberships: Stripe automatically retries a failed renewal payment as part of its standard dunning, so most recover on their own once the card clears — there is no separate “collect payment” or “renew” button for card-billed memberships. If the payment still can’t be recovered — for example the renewal invoice was voided directly in Stripe — the membership stays Past Due and benefits remain paused; resolve the payment in Stripe, or contact support and we’ll reconcile the subscription for you.

Bella also runs an automatic safety net: it checks hourly and moves any membership whose paid period has lapsed (after a short grace window) to Past Due, even if a Stripe notification was missed — so a lapsed membership never silently keeps handing out benefits or sits stuck as “Active” but unbookable.

​

Pausing a membership

If the plan has Allow pause enabled, team members can pause a client’s subscription:

1. Open the membership from the client’s profile or the Members list
2. Click Pause
3. The Stripe subscription is paused — no further charges until resumed

While paused, benefits cannot be redeemed. The client’s session counters are preserved. Note: Pausing is managed by team members from the business dashboard. Clients cannot pause their own membership from the online portal — they can only cancel.

​

Resuming a membership

1. Open the paused membership
2. Click Resume
3. Billing resumes from the next cycle

​

Cancelling a membership

Memberships can be cancelled in two ways:

• End of period: The membership stays active until the current billing period ends, then cancels. Benefits remain available until that date.
• Immediate: The membership cancels straight away. Benefits stop immediately.

For team members:

1. Open the membership from the client’s profile or the Members list
2. Click Cancel
3. Choose whether to cancel immediately or at the end of the current period

For clients (online): Clients can cancel their own membership from the My Membership page on your online booking portal. They choose between ending at the current period or cancelling immediately — except on an instalment plan within its term, where only switching off renewal is offered (the remaining instalments complete, then it ends at the term end).

---

​

Benefit Redemption

Membership benefits are applied automatically at checkout when a client’s appointment includes a matching service.

​

How redemption works

1. A team member checks out an appointment for a client with an active membership
2. The system checks whether any membership benefits match the services in the appointment
3. If a match is found, the discount is applied automatically
4. For capped benefits (e.g., “4 sessions per cycle”), one session is deducted from the counter

Matching rules:

• Benefits scoped to specific services or bundles only apply to those — a bundle-scoped benefit covers a booked bundle, a service-scoped benefit covers that service
• Benefits scoped to all services apply to any service
• If multiple benefits could apply, the system uses the best match — an exact service or bundle match is preferred over all-services, and higher discounts are preferred

A benefit’s scope is precise: it reaches exactly what it covers, and no more. Because a bundle expands at booking into one appointment line per component service, scope decides which of those lines a benefit touches. Add-on charges are never covered by a benefit — membership discounts and included sessions are calculated on the base service price only; add-ons are always paid by the client (see Service Add-ons). Worked example 1 — a benefit scoped to a service, inside a bundle. A “VIP” plan has a benefit scoped to the Men’s Cut service (20% off). The client books a Cut & Blow Dry bundle, which expands into two lines — a Men’s Cut line and a Blow Dry line.

• The Men’s Cut line is discounted 20% — it matches the benefit’s scope.
• The Blow Dry line is charged in full — it isn’t in scope.
• The bundle as a whole is not discounted; only the matching component line is.

Worked example 2 — a benefit scoped to the bundle itself (must not widen). A different plan has a benefit scoped to the Cut & Blow Dry bundle (20% off).

• When the client books that bundle, the discount applies across its component lines.
• When the same client books Men’s Cut on its own (not as part of the bundle), the benefit does not apply — a bundle-scoped benefit never widens to a standalone booking of one of its component services. To discount the standalone service too, add a service-scoped benefit for it.

​

Session counters

For benefits with a session limit, the system tracks usage per billing cycle:

• Remaining sessions show how many redemptions are left in the current cycle
• Counters reset automatically at the start of each new billing cycle (or once per term on an instalment plan — see Instalment plans)
• If an appointment is cancelled within the same billing cycle (or the same term, on an instalment plan), the redeemed session is automatically restored

Clients can view their session usage in the My Membership portal.

​

Members-only services and bundles

A service or a bundle can be made members-only — bookable online only by a client who holds a covering active membership. A bundle is members-only when its own members-only flag is set or any of its component services is members-only.

• The gate is a covering active membership, not any specific plan — so a member with a benefit that reaches the service (or the bundle) can book it; a non-member, or a member whose plans don’t cover it, cannot.
• Gating applies to the online booking portal. Team members can still book a members-only service or bundle for any client from the Scheduler.
• Members-only gating scopes at the service level (covering all its variants and tiers) and at the bundle level. It is separate from the discount — a service can be members-only without a discount, or discounted without being members-only.

To make a service or bundle members-only, use the members-only setting on the service or bundle in your Service Catalogue.

---

​

Client Self-Service

Clients manage their memberships through the online booking portal.

​

Browsing plans

When memberships are enabled with online-purchasable plans, clients see a Memberships link in the navigation of your booking page. The page shows all available plans with:

• Plan name and description
• Price and billing frequency
• Benefits list with discount details and session limits
• A Join button to start the purchase flow

​

My Membership

After subscribing, clients access their membership from the My Membership page (available in the account menu). They can see:

• Membership status and plan name
• Activation date and next charge date (or end date if cancelling)
• Session counters for capped benefits
• Option to cancel their membership

---

​

Members List

Go to Memberships > Members in the sidebar to view all enrolled members across all plans.

• Search by client name or plan name
• View client name, plan name, price, billing cycle, and status for each member
• Click any row to open the membership detail

---

​

Automated Notifications

Three membership-related automated messages can be configured in Settings > Automated Messages: Each message can be enabled or disabled for email and SMS independently. You can customise the message templates using the standard template variables. For more details, see Automated Messages.

---

​

Enabling Memberships

Memberships must be enabled before plans can be created or clients can subscribe.

1. Go to Settings > Memberships
2. Toggle Enable memberships on

When you disable memberships while active members exist, Stripe continues to bill them. You’ll see a message directing you to the Members list to manage existing subscriptions. To configure memberships, see Membership Settings.

---

​

FAQs

Q: Can a plan have multiple benefits? A: Yes. Each plan can include any number of benefits, each with its own discount, session limit, and scope (specific services, whole bundles, or all services). For example, “4 included facials per month plus 20% off all other services.” Q: What happens if I change the price of a plan? A: Existing members keep their current price. The new price applies to new enrolments only. Stripe creates a new price object internally — existing subscriptions are not affected. Q: Can a client have multiple active memberships? A: Yes. A client can subscribe to more than one plan simultaneously. Q: What happens when a payment fails? A: The membership moves to Past Due status. Stripe automatically retries the payment according to your Stripe retry settings. The client receives a notification if the payment fails. If payment is recovered, the membership returns to Active. Q: Can I offer a trial or introductory price? A: Memberships do not currently support introductory pricing or free trials. All billing starts from the first cycle. Q: Can clients pause their own membership? A: Pausing is currently available to team members only from the business dashboard. Clients can cancel their membership from the online portal. Q: What happens to session counters when a membership is paused? A: Session counters are preserved. When the membership is resumed, the counters continue from where they left off. Q: Do membership discounts apply to add-on charges? A: No. Membership benefits apply to the base service price only — add-on charges are always paid by the client, consistent with packages and per-line discounts. See Service Add-ons. Q: If a benefit covers a service, is it discounted inside a bundle too? A: Yes — but only the matching component line. A bundle expands at booking into one line per component service, and a service-scoped benefit discounts the line for that service and leaves the others charged. A benefit scoped to the bundle itself covers the bundle’s lines, but does not apply when the same service is booked on its own. See Benefit Redemption. Q: What happens if an appointment is cancelled after a session was redeemed? A: If the appointment is cancelled within the same billing cycle, the redeemed session is automatically restored to the client’s session counter. A reversal entry is recorded in the redemption history. Sessions from a previous billing cycle are not restored. Q: Who can manage memberships? A: Team members with the Memberships permission can view plans and members. Creating, editing, and enrolling requires the Manage level permission. Q: Can I control which plans are available online? A: Yes. The Allow online purchase toggle is per-plan, so you can offer some plans exclusively through the dashboard while making others available on your booking page. Q: How does billing work with “Monthly” vs “Every 4 weeks”? A: Monthly bills on the same calendar date each month (e.g., the 15th). Every 4 weeks bills every 28 days regardless of the calendar. Choose based on your preference for calendar-aligned or fixed-interval billing. Q: Is there a waitlist when a plan is full? A: Not currently. A full plan shows a “Fully subscribed” badge and blocks new online purchases, but there’s no queue to join or notification when a spot opens up — you’d need to check back or ask the business directly.

---

To enable and configure memberships, see Membership Settings.