Membership / Subscription Management

If desired for customers, "members" or simply cross-department billing, myTurn provides a number of membership management tools. Users can log in to the system to get additional information about items in your inventory, check to see their lending history, and view receipts for their transactions. If you charge for membership/subscriptions they can also enable or disable automatic renewal for their membership, put a payment method on file, and more.

Admins can setup membership levels with associated costs and a default loan period for items (e.g. you can allow different types of members to borrow items for different periods of time by default). A membership fee (or recommended donation), and default length of membership can be assigned to each membership type as well. This allows for having membership levels like:

• Regular: $30/year
• Students: $10 for 6 months
• Professional: $50 for 3 months

To configure your membership types:

1. Click on Settings -> Customers / Users -> Membership Types
2. You can show or edit an existing membership type or
3. Click on the "New Membership Type" at the top.
4. Fill in the information for that membership type (see options below)

Members can sign up online but will be put into a “membership request” state till an admin grants them membership. Usually, the membership process includes singing required forms and potentially paying a membership fee. Admins should not change an account to have “full member” status until that user has filled out any required paperwork and paid their membership/co-op fees/etc. if necessary.

Other Membership Options

• Name: The name of the Membership. This will be displayed to members and admins.
• Allow Check Out: If this is enabled, it means that admins can check items out to users with this membership type. It does not mean the users can check items out themselves.
• Allow Reservations: It this option is enabled, users with this membership type can reserve items (make sure Reservations are enabled in Settings -> Loans & Reservations).
• Duration: How long the membership lasts by default.
• Renewal Window: If a user renews their membership after it has expired for less than the renewal window, then it will be considered a renewal and the expiration will be calculated from the expiration date.
• Allow Automatic Renewal: Can users turn on automatic renewal for this membership type? This is typically used for paid memberships and if the user has a card on file, it will be charged at renewal time.
• Membership Fee: This sets the costs for this membership
• Renewal Fee (if different): You can set a renewal cost that is different than the initial membership. This is often useful for monthly or shorter term membership to encourage users to stay members rather than only sign up/pay "as needed".
• Allow Self Renewal: unchecking this option will make it so that members can't self-renew to this membership type. This is useful in a few situations:
  • Discontinued memberships: if you discontinue a membership and do not want to "grandfather" or allow people to continue to renew the old membership
  • Introductory offers: if you offer a special for a first year or few months, you can require the user to choose a new membership type when their initial membership expires
• Flexible Cost: Allow a "pay what you want/can" option. When using a Flexible membership cost, the "Membership Fee" will be listed as the Recommended amount.
• Minimum Membership Fee: The minimum amount you will accept for this membership type. This amount is only applicable for memberships with flexible cost.
• Available for Self Purchase: If you are using our online payments system, you can allow users to sign up and pay for their own membership
• Update Warning: when they sign up, this message will be added to their "User Warning" which will be seen by admins when interacting with the user. It will not be visible to users.
  
  • This is most often used to provide a warning to the admin to check a users ID the first time they come in after they purchase a membership online.
• Required Agreement: you can set a special membership agreement just for this membership type (e.g. "Organizational")
• Discontinued: This membership is no longer offered to new customers, but old ones can still renew it unless "Allow self-renewal" is unchecked--see above.
  • This will also hide this membership from users and admins (the closest thing to deleting a membership)
• Discounts: You can set discounts on loan and late fees by membership type
• Default Loan Length: If an item type is set to "use membership type" for the default loan length, this is the value that will be used instead of the default for the Item Type when doing ad-hoc/walk in loans. It will not impact the length of reservations.
• Maximum Number of Items Checked Out: You can set a maximum number of items a user can have checked out at one time. This value will also be used as the maximum number of items the user can request per reservation.
• May Use Self Service Kiosk: if your organization has the Kiosk Mode enabled, this allows you to specify which memberships can use the Kiosk
• Expiration Reminders: send up to 5 reminders to encourage members to renew their membership