Membership Plans

Membership plans define the benefits users receive based on their subscription level.

How Memberships Work

Memberships are separate from roles:

• Role = What you can do (permissions)
• Membership = What you get (benefits)

Getting a membership makes a Guest a Member. When a Guest buys a membership, or staff grant them one, MakerVera changes their role to Member automatically, so they get Member permissions and show as Member on the Users page. Nothing else is needed.

Staff, Manager and Admin users keep their role when they get a membership. Designations such as Instructor or Key Holder are not affected. The role is not reverted when a membership ends, so change it by hand if you need to. A Staff role user without a membership can still access admin features but doesn’t get member benefits.

Membership Benefits

Each plan can include:

Booking Benefits

• Advance booking days - How far ahead you can book resources
• Booking limits - Maximum concurrent bookings
• Priority booking - First access to popular time slots

Pricing Benefits

• Resource discounts - Percentage off resource bookings
• Event discounts - Percentage off class registrations
• Store discounts - Percentage off store purchases

Access Benefits

• Member-only resources - Access to premium equipment
• Extended hours - Access during member-only times
• Custom benefits - Defined per plan

Membership vs Role vs Designation

Need	Use
User should access admin dashboard	Change their Role to Staff or higher
User should get booking discounts	Assign a Membership plan
User should teach classes	Add Instructor designation
User should get 24/7 access	Add Key Holder designation
User should manage other users’ roles	Change their Role to Admin

Granting Memberships

Memberships can be granted via:

Self-Service Payment

The member signs up themselves from the Membership page in their member area, picks a plan and billing interval, and pays through your makerspace’s payment provider. Activation is automatic on payment confirmation. For the member’s walk-through, see Joining a Membership.

Admin Grant (or Cancel)

Admins with the manage_memberships permission can manage a user’s membership directly from the user profile:

1. Go to People → Users and click on the user.
2. In the Membership section of the profile, click Manage Membership.
3. In the modal that opens, pick an action:
   • Grant a membership — choose a plan, a grant type (see below), and optionally add notes (up to 1000 characters) explaining why the grant was made. Notes are stored in the audit log. You can only grant a plan to someone without a current membership (see One Membership at a Time).
   • Cancel Membership — end the membership. Optionally add a reason (up to 255 characters). For a member who pays through your payment provider, this also stops their billing (see What Happens to Billing).
4. Apply it: click Grant Membership for a grant, or Confirm Cancel in the confirmation that opens.

The modal also lists the member’s add-ons, where you can add or remove them for the member (see Changing a member’s add-ons).

Memberships can’t be frozen or paused. To give a member a break, cancel and re-grant, or grant a complimentary membership.

All grant / cancel actions are recorded in the audit log with the admin’s identity, the action, and any reason / notes you supplied. Grant volumes also surface in the Membership Signups report (under Reports) when you toggle the Include admin grants filter.

What Happens to Billing

The cancel confirmation tells you what will happen to the member’s billing before you confirm:

Action	Member who pays through your payment provider	Admin Grant, Comp or Promotion membership
Cancel	Billing stops right away: their subscription is cancelled, including any add-ons billed with it. They won’t be charged for this membership again, and no refund is issued.	Nothing changes in billing — the membership isn’t billed.

If MakerVera can’t stop a paying member’s billing — for example, because your payment provider can’t be reached — the cancellation isn’t applied: you’ll see an error, and the membership stays as it was. Try again in a few minutes, and contact MakerVera support if it keeps happening.

Tip

Cancellations from this modal are immediate, and so is the end of billing. If you need a cancellation that takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle, ask the member to cancel from their own membership card — the self-service cancellation respects whatever billing-cycle policy your makerspace has configured with the payment provider.

Grant Types

• Payment - The member paid through the self-service signup or another billing channel.
• Comp - Complimentary (for staff, instructors, partners, etc.).
• Promotion - Trial or promotional period.
• Admin Grant - Assigned by an admin for any other reason.

When a Membership Ends on Its Own

• Paid memberships end when the member’s subscription with your payment provider ends.
• Admin Grant, Comp and Promotion memberships that have an end date expire automatically within a day after that date has passed. The member loses the plan’s benefits, and their role (including Member) and account stay as they are.

When a Renewal Payment Fails

When a paying member’s renewal payment is declined, your payment provider retries the charge automatically, and MakerVera:

• Marks an active membership as past due.
• Records the declined attempt as a Failed transaction.
• Emails the member that their payment failed.

When a retry succeeds, the membership becomes active again.

Sometimes the payment provider reports a declined attempt only after the renewal has already been paid, for example when its notice arrives late. MakerVera still records that attempt as a Failed transaction, but the membership stays active and the member gets no payment-failed email.

A past-due membership still counts as the member’s current membership (see One Membership at a Time).

Note

For now, the membership card on a user’s profile and the Manage Membership modal show only active memberships, so a past-due member appears there without a current membership. The modal offers the grant form, and a grant is refused because the member already has a membership.

Managing Membership Plans

Go to People → Memberships to:

Create New Plans

1. Click Add Membership Plan
2. Set name, description, and pricing
3. Configure benefits
4. Set member cap (optional)
5. Set usage limits and how often they reset (optional, see Usage Limits)
6. Choose the places the plan covers (optional, see Places a Plan Covers)
7. Click Save

To sell or give a one-time pass instead (a set number of visits, or unlimited visits, for a set number of days, paid once), choose One-time pass under Type; see One-Time Passes.

Edit Plan Benefits

1. Click on a plan
2. Modify benefits, pricing, or limits
3. Click Save

Changes apply to new grants; existing members keep their current terms until renewal. Usage limits are the exception: a raised or removed limit applies to current members straight away (see below).

Usage Limits

The Usage limits section of the plan form sets how much of the space a member on the plan can use before their allowance starts over:

Field	What it limits
Allowance resets	How often the allowance starts over: Every month or Every week. A monthly allowance resets on the day of the month the membership started; a weekly one resets seven days after the last reset.
Visits per period	Visits, counted from staff check-in and QR self check-in. A member is counted at most once a day.
Bookings per period	Resource bookings. Shown only when bookings are turned on for your makerspace.
Booked hours per period	Whole hours of resource bookings. Shown only when bookings are turned on for your makerspace.

Leave a limit blank, or tick Unlimited, for no limit. A limit is a whole number of 1 or more, up to what fits in one period:

Resets	Visits	Bookings	Booked hours
Every month	31	999	744
Every week	7	999	168

The same rule applies to the member cap: leave it blank or tick Unlimited for no cap. A cap of 0 isn’t accepted.

Some rules protect members who already hold the plan:

• The reset period is fixed. You choose it when you create the plan; after that the form shows it but you can’t change it.
• Limits can only go up while the plan has members. If anyone holds the plan right now (including members whose renewal payment is overdue), you can raise or remove a limit, but you can’t lower one or add one where there was none. MakerVera explains why, keeps the form open with your changes, and saves nothing from that edit. To offer lower limits, create a new plan.
• Raised limits apply at once. Members on the plan get the extra allowance in their current period.

Members see a plan’s limits on the plan cards when they choose a plan and again at checkout, so they know what they’re signing up for. When a member uses every visit in their allowance, MakerVera emails them once that period with the date their visits reset (see Notifications). Staff can still check them in; see Member Check-In.

To see how much of each plan’s visits members actually use, and how often they reach the limit, open the Membership Utilization Report (Foundational plan and above).

Visits left and the running-low email

Members see Your visits on My membership: visits used and left in the current period (or Unlimited) and the day their visits reset. The row turns amber when they’re running low and red when no visits are left.

MakerVera also emails a member once per period when they’re running low on visits: shortly after the end of a day they visited, if their visits used reached the warning point and they still have at least one left. The warning point is:

• 1 visit left for limits of 5 visits or fewer (for example 4 of 5 used), and
• 80 % used, rounded up, for larger limits (for example 8 of 10, 7 of 8 or 16 of 20).

The email says how many visits are left, that the limit takes effect at the end of the day the last visit is used, and the day their visits reset, with a link to My membership. It’s never sent for unlimited plans or a 1-visit limit, and never on the night a member runs out (they get the “no visits left” email instead). It’s a membership email, so members who turned off membership emails don’t get it. Passes get the same warning once per pass; see One-Time Passes.

Note

Visit limits are counted today. Booking and booked-hour limits are saved and shown to members, but MakerVera doesn’t yet stop a booking that goes over them.

Places a Plan Covers

The Access section of the plan form, after Usage limits, sets which parts of your makerspace a member on the plan can use:

Choice	What it covers
The whole space	Every workspace and piece of equipment, including ones you add later. This is the default, and every plan you created before this option existed covers the whole space.
Only these places	Only the workspaces and equipment you pick. A workspace includes all of its equipment, now and later. You can also pick a piece of equipment on its own.

When you choose Only these places, search and pick from your active workspaces and equipment. Equipment inside a workspace you’ve already picked shows as Included with that workspace, so you don’t need to pick it separately. You have to pick at least one place; to cover everything, choose The whole space instead.

Like limits, places protect members who already hold the plan:

• Places can only be added while the plan has members. If anyone holds the plan right now (including members whose renewal payment is overdue), you can add places or switch to the whole space, but you can’t remove a place or switch from the whole space to chosen places. MakerVera explains why, keeps the form open with your changes, and saves nothing from that edit. To offer fewer places, create a new plan.
• Swapping equipment for its whole workspace is fine. It covers more, not less.

Every change to a plan’s places is recorded in the audit log, with the places before and after.

Note

A plan’s places are used by bookings: when bookings are turned on for your makerspace, members can’t book equipment their plan doesn’t cover (see Booking Equipment & Workspaces). Members see each plan’s places on the plan cards and at checkout, and their own places under Your access on their Membership page. An add-on can give a member more places on top of their plan (see Membership Add-ons). Door access will use the same places later.

Checking a member’s access at the front desk

Open the member’s profile from Users. The membership card’s Access section lists the places their plan or add-ons cover in two groups:

• Can use: the places they can book now.
• Waiting on an authorization: places their membership includes but that need an authorization they don’t hold yet, each with Missing and the authorization’s name.

When different places come from different parts of their membership (their plan and an add-on), each place also says what gives it (for example From Ceramics access for an add-on). A person with no live membership shows No access; a whole-space member at a makerspace with no workspaces or equipment yet shows No places set up yet. Archived and offline places are left out. Anyone who can view users (Staff and above) sees this.

Add-ons and Included Items

• Add-ons in the page header opens the Add-ons page: every add-on members can add to their membership, the plans that offer it, and the places it covers. See Membership Add-ons.
• Included items on a plan’s card opens Included with this plan: what the plan includes every cycle, gives once as a welcome gift, or requires. See Add-On Products.

View Subscribers

Click on a plan to see all users currently subscribed.

One Membership at a Time

Each user can have only one current membership at a time. A membership counts as current while it’s active or past due (a renewal payment failed and the member hasn’t paid yet).

If you try to grant a plan to someone who already has a current membership, MakerVera refuses the grant and tells you the member already has a membership, which may be past due. Nothing is changed. To move the member to a different plan, manage their existing membership instead — for example, cancel it first and then grant the new plan. (Members can switch plans themselves from their Membership page; there is no admin screen for changing a member’s plan yet.)

For users who need multiple plans’ benefits, consider:

• Creating a combined plan with all needed benefits
• Using designations for capability-based access instead