Memberships

Offer recurring membership plans with automatic billing, discounts, and add-ons.

Memberships are recurring subscription plans that give customers ongoing access to benefits like discounted bookings, exclusive activities, or automatic discounts at checkout. Billing is handled through Stripe, with payments collected automatically on each cycle.

Create a membership plan

1. Open memberships

   Navigate to your memberships section and select Create Membership.

2. Set the plan details

   Enter the membership name, description, and recurring price. Choose a billing interval (monthly, quarterly, or yearly).

3. Add benefits

   Define what members receive. This typically includes a membership discount that auto-applies at checkout.

4. Publish

   Make the membership available on your booking page for customers to sign up.

Plan visibility

By default, all membership plans are visible on your public booking page. You can hide a plan so that it no longer appears to customers browsing online, while keeping it available for staff to sell through the point of sale.

To hide a plan, open the plan settings and set Visible to No. Hidden plans:

• Do not appear on your public booking page
• Remain available in the point of sale, so staff can still sign customers up in person
• Can be made visible again at any time

This is useful when you want to offer a plan exclusively through in-person sales, phase out a plan without archiving it, or temporarily remove a plan from your website while keeping it sellable at the counter.

Hiding a plan does not affect existing members. Customers who are already subscribed continue their membership as normal.

Membership discounts

When you link a discount code to a membership, it is automatically applied whenever the member checks out. Membership discounts are always auto-applied and stackable, so members can combine their membership benefit with other promotional codes.

You can configure how long the associated Stripe coupon lasts:

• Forever — the discount applies for the entire membership duration
• Time-limited — the discount applies for a specified number of months

Viewing membership details

When you open a member’s detail page, the header displays the membership name and plan name — for example, “Gold Membership (Annual).” This makes it easy to identify which product and billing tier each member is on, especially when you offer multiple plans under the same membership.

The detail page also shows the current billing period as a date range (e.g., “01/04/2026 – 01/05/2026”) alongside the billing interval. If the billing cycle has a start date but no end date yet, only the start is shown.

On a customer’s profile, the Memberships tab lists all active memberships with the same membership and plan name labels, the current billing period, any attached add-ons, and the member users.

Billing

Memberships are billed through Stripe. When a customer signs up:

1. A Stripe subscription is created with the configured billing interval.
2. Payments are collected automatically on each billing cycle.
3. If a payment fails, Stripe’s retry logic attempts to collect again.

The Renewal date on your subscription settings page indicates when the next billing cycle begins.

Past-due payments

When a membership payment fails — including the initial payment for a newly requested membership — Sailia marks the subscription as past due and displays a warning banner on the customer’s Memberships profile tab. The banner reads “Action required — One or more subscription payments have failed” and includes a Complete Payment button.

On the admin side, the member detail page shows an “Action required” warning with a Complete Payment button. You can use this button directly, or direct the client to their profile to complete the payment through the Stripe customer portal.

You can also set up an automated workflow using the Membership past due trigger to send an email or SMS when a payment fails. This lets you proactively notify the customer and include a direct link to resolve the issue, without waiting for them to log in and see the banner.

The banner appears automatically whenever at least one of the customer’s memberships has a past-due status. It disappears once all outstanding payments are resolved.

Adding members from the same family

Multiple members of the same family can hold the same membership, as long as each person is only added once. When you purchase a membership for specific family members, Sailia checks whether any of the selected users are already on that membership. If one or more of them are, the purchase is blocked with an error.

This means you can buy the same membership for different family members in separate transactions. For example, if a parent purchases a membership for one child, they can later purchase the same membership for a sibling — but they cannot re-purchase it for a child who is already a member.

Add-ons

Add-ons let you attach optional extras to a membership plan. Customers can subscribe to add-ons when they sign up, or you can add them to an existing membership later. Each add-on can be one-time or recurring, and you can set a maximum quantity per member.

Create and link an add-on

1. Open a membership plan

   Navigate to the membership plan you want to add extras to.

2. Add an add-on

   Select Link Add-on. You can create a new add-on or link an existing one. Enter the add-on name, an optional description (up to 150 characters), and choose whether billing is recurring (charged each billing cycle) or one-time.

3. Set pricing and limits

   Set the price for the add-on. Optionally set a max quantity to cap how many units a member can subscribe to.

Add-ons are billed through Stripe alongside the membership subscription. Recurring add-ons follow the same billing interval as the membership plan.

Add an add-on to an existing member

You can attach add-ons to an active membership at any time. When you add an add-on to an existing member, Stripe prorates the charge for the current billing cycle by default.

Migrating memberships

If you are switching to Sailia from another membership system, you can bulk-import your existing members. The migration process creates families, users, and membership instances from your import data.

During migration, you can also assign add-ons to each imported membership instance. This means members keep their existing add-on subscriptions when they move to Sailia — there is no need to manually re-add them after import.

Each row in your import data can include:

• Plan ID — the Sailia membership plan to assign the member to
• Billing cycle dates — the current billing period start and end
• Member number — an optional custom member number to preserve from your old system
• Add-ons — a list of add-on selections, each with a membership add-on ID and quantity
• Note — an optional note attached to the membership instance

Add-ons included during migration must already be linked to the target membership plan in Sailia. Create your membership plans and link the relevant add-ons before running the import.

Accounting

If you use Xero accounting sync, assign accounting categories to your membership plans. This ensures revenue is categorized correctly on Xero invoices.

Troubleshooting

A member's payment failed

Stripe handles recurring payment retries automatically. If all retries fail, the membership may be paused or cancelled depending on your Stripe settings. When a payment fails — whether it is an initial signup payment or a recurring renewal — the membership is marked as past due and a warning banner appears on both the admin member detail page and the customer’s Memberships profile tab. Use the Complete Payment button on either page to resolve the issue through the Stripe customer portal. You can also configure a Membership past due workflow to automatically email or text the customer when this happens.

Cannot purchase a membership for a family member

Sailia prevents duplicate memberships for the same person on the same plan. Check whether the family member already has an active membership. If they do, the purchase is blocked intentionally.

Related guides

Activity passes

Sell prepaid session bundles to your customers.

Discount codes

Create discounts for memberships and passes.

Payments

How Stripe handles membership billing.

Family accounts

Group family members under a single account.