Standard Clubs - Prices and Memberships

This guide, part of the standard club setup series, details Step 3, Adding Membership Periods and Prices. This is where you define the duration of bookings (i.e. how many sessions someone can sign up for in one go), if guardians can sign up via the Parent Portal or Parent App and set up the costs of the club (if Paid),

This is the fourth guide in our series on setting up a standard club:

• Introduction 
• Adding a Club
• Scheduling sessions
• Prices and memberships (You are here)
• Managing participants

Prerequisites

• You must have the Finance: Administer permission to manage the payments side of clubs.
• You must have already completed the previous steps: Adding the club and Adding sessions.
• You must have Card Payments enabled on your site if you want to take payments via the Portal or App.
   

Important Note on Multiple Prices

If you set up more than one price, these count as two separate options that the guardian could book, and they could sign up for either or both.

If you only want certain guardians to be able to book at a specific price (e.g., if Pupil Premium students pay a different price or can attend for free), it would be best to set up two separate clubs, one for each price. More on this here: Can I offer reduced or discounted price clubs for families with multiple children?

Adding Membership Periods and Prices

You must add membership options for both Paid and Free Clubs; without these, neither Admins nor Guardians can make bookings. 

You can view a membership as a subscription to the club, and even if the subscription is free, you still need to define its length and availability.

You can set more than one membership option. For example, you could set up a termly membership at a discounted rate per session, available to purchase only up until the start of the term, and a separate daily or weekly membership option that becomes available once your term starts.

Navigate to the Membership Periods section and click +Add to open the Membership Period slide-over.
 

Note: For paid clubs, this section is titled "Membership Periods and Prices."
 

Setting Membership Periods

The Membership Period is the "unit" of time a student is registered for a club when a booking is made. 

• If you want guardians to be able to select specific sessions, set up a Daily membership period.
• If you want guardians to sign up and pay for sessions in bulk, set up a membership period of a Week, Month, Term, or Year so that students can be signed up for all sessions within those timeframes at once.

You can set up both daily and bulk options, but a guardian cannot purchase a bulk (e.g., termly) period if they have already purchased a daily session that falls within that term's date range.

Note: Weekly and Monthly membership periods are based on calendar weeks, starting on a Monday for weeks and the first day of the month for months.

Membership Fields to Complete (Paid and Free Clubs)

In the Add Membership Period slide-over, the top four fields relate to membership periods. You must set:

• Period: Select the unit of time (Day, Week, Month, Term, or Year).

• Membership name: This should be clear, as it is what guardians will see on the Parent Portal or Parent App. 

  For example, if you have one Termly type membership for the whole year, this can be 'Term'. If you have a different membership price for each term, create three membership periods and call them 'Autumn Term', 'Spring Term', and 'Summer Term'.

• Available From & Available To: These dates determine the number of discrete Membership Periods a student can be signed up for within the specified period. For example, if a Membership Period is a Term, and it is available throughout the whole year, a student can be registered for three terms, but they only have to book one term at a time.

Setting the Price (Paid clubs only)

In the same slide-over, complete the pricing details for paid clubs (you do not see these sections for free clubs):

• Pricing Basis: This specifies whether the price is calculated per session or for the whole Membership Period. For example, a club could charge £3 per session or £30 for a specific period, such as a term. 
• Price (Ex VAT) and VAT Rate: Enter the price and applicable tax rate. This is the price for a single session or the entire period, depending on the pricing basis you select.
• Variable Contribution?: Ticking this box allows guardians to pay what they can for club attendance, rather than a set price.

Enabling Guardian Sign Up (Paid and Free Clubs)

This is where you opt to allow guardians to sign their children up via the Parent Portal.

• Set the dates and times for when guardians can sign students up for the club: Signup Opens and Signup Closes.
• If you don't want guardians to be able to sign up, leave the 'Signup Opens' field empty.
• When finished, click Save.

Note: Arbor will not automatically email guardians to tell them they can sign up. You will need to let them know via email, SMS, or in-app message.

Setting Up Different Prices

You can repeat this process to set up different prices for different membership lengths. It is not possible to set different prices for various student groups within the same Standard Club, like you can for trips or wraparound care clubs.

Things to note:

• If you are creating another membership and the chosen Period and Pricing Basis are the same, your existing membership will be overwritten.
• To prevent this, ensure that you set them with slightly different Available From and Available To dates.

Making changes

If you need to make any changes to your pricing structures and membership options, please refer to our dedicated guide: Can we change the price of a Club?

This concludes our guide on memberships and prices. With your pricing and membership periods set, the final step is to sign students up to the club.