Membership upgrades and renewals

Learn how to enable, manage, and troubleshoot membership upgrades, extensions, and early renewals for your members.

⭐ Membership Upgrades

Members can now upgrade their membership to a higher tier, if available.

To enable upgrades in the Admin:

Go to Settings > Membership Settings
Select the relevant membership type to upgrade from
Under the Advanced tab, select 'Enable upgrade from this membership'
(Optional) Add a custom label for the upgrade button (default is "Upgrade Membership")

Upgrade categories currently available are Individual (Adult, Youth, etc.) and Family.

If there's no higher value membership in the same category, users will see: "No membership types available to upgrade to." In this case, ensure the "Allow Membership Upgrade" setting is not checked for the highest tier.

📆 12-Month Memberships

When a member upgrades from one membership to another, two things happen:

They pay the full price of the new membership
Their new expiry date is calculated based on what type of membership they're moving from and to.

Upgrading adds a full 12 months at full price to the membership period.

Users will see an Upgrade button on their membership card screen.
On the next screen, they choose an option and see the new expiry date before confirming.

🔁 Recurring Subscriptions

Upgrades are priced pro-rata based on the remaining value of the current membership.

Example: A member with $50 value left on an Individual Membership upgrades to a $100 GOLD Membership.
- They will pay $50 now (to make up the $100 cost of the new membership)
- Renewal will still occur on the original date, and be $100 for the GOLD membership moving forward

🙌 Generous pro-rata setting

When upgrading from one annual membership to a more expensive annual membership, the system uses value carryover: it works out how much money the member has "unused" on their current membership, and uses that to add extra time onto the new membership.

🏆 In every case, the member pays the full price of the new membership. The "discount" comes through extra time on the new expiry date, not a price reduction.

There are two ways the value carryover can be calculated:

Standard (non-generous) pro-rata — the default

The unused value is calculated using the old (cheaper) membership's price.

Formula: Extra time = (old price × fraction of year remaining) ÷ new price × 12 months

Example: A member has 6 months left on a $50 annual membership and upgrades to a $200 annual membership.

Unused value of old membership: $50 × ½ = $25
Extra time at new price: $25 ÷ $200 = about 1.5 months
New expiry: 12 months + ~1.5 months from today (≈ 13.5 months total)

This is fair, but it can feel a bit stingy for members upgrading to a much more expensive tier — they only get a small amount of bonus time.

Generous pro-rata — when "Generous" is turned on

The unused value is calculated as if the member had been paying the new (more expensive) price all along. It's the most member-friendly option.

Formula: Extra time = simply the same fraction of a year that was left on the old membership.

Example: Same scenario — 6 months left on a $50 membership, upgrading to $200, but with generous pro-rata enabled.

Treats the unused half-year of old membership as worth half a year of new membership.
Extra time: 6 months
New expiry: 12 months + 6 months from today (≈ 18 months total)

To turn generous pro-rata on, go to the advanced tab under the membership type settings. This applies to the membership that is being upgraded to, not from.

⏰ What if the member's old membership has already expired?

If there's no time left on the old membership at the point of upgrade, no extra time is added — the new expiry is simply 12 months from today (or whatever the new membership's duration is).

🕒 Custom Duration Memberships

For Short Term Memberships, Visitor Memberships, or Day Passes:

Users will see an Extend Pass button (not "Upgrade")
They can extend their pass to any higher value membership in the same category

"Category" here refers to the type (e.g. Individual → Individual or Family → Family), not the categories you create in Admin.

Even if the pass is in a different admin category (e.g. 3 Day Pass under "Short Term"), it can still be extended to longer-term memberships a long as the type aligns.

In the example below, the user has a 3 Day Pass (which belongs to the Short Term category in Admin and on the app). They can still upgrade to several other memberships, even if those appear in a different admin category or app section.

A custom duration must be set in the membership package settings. All memberships are 12 months by default.

🎁 Upgrading from a free membership

When a user upgrades from a free membership to a paid membership, it deactivates their current free membership as one of the steps.

If the user then does not follow through with the upgrade then their account will stay deactivated. It will not automatically return to a free membership.

Remaining on a free membership:

If they do not want to upgrade any more (and are still eligible for a free membership), you can manually activate them back to free from the admin console.

Moving to paid:

They can move to a paid membership at any time by clicking the "Join Now" button on the red card screen and completing the payment process.

🌱 Early Renewals

Members can renew their membership up to 60 days before the expiry date.

A Renew Now button will appear above the membership card
Renewals can be completed in-app in just a few steps

This early renewal feature does not apply to recurring subscriptions

If upgrade options are available, users can renew and upgrade in a single transaction.

Membership upgrades and renewals

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