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Prerequisites: You should have Services and/or Products created before setting up memberships, since membership benefits and credits reference existing catalog items.
Memberships generate predictable recurring revenue for your clinic. Patients enroll, get billed automatically, and receive benefits like item discounts and credits — so they keep coming back. Memberships let you offer recurring subscription plans to patients. Each membership defines its own pricing, billing frequency, benefits, credits, and enrollment terms. Patients enroll in a membership and are billed automatically on a recurring schedule, while receiving the benefits you configure. For how a membership’s cycle billing translates into revenue on your accounting reports — including the choices that affect when revenue is counted (per redemption, spread over the cycle, as credit is spent, or at renewal) — see Membership Revenue Recognition.

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Create a Membership

1

Navigate to Memberships

Go to Settings > Growth > Memberships.
2

Add Membership

Click the Add Membership button in the top right corner. This opens a full-page editor with multiple sections.
3

Fill in Basic Information

Enter the following details:
  • Membership Name: The name patients will see (e.g., “Gold Membership”, “VIP Monthly Plan”).
  • Description: An optional summary of what the membership includes. Use the AI generator to draft this automatically.
  • Setup Fee / Promotional Discount: A one-time charge when a patient enrolls, collected at signup even when staff defer the recurring charge. Enter a negative value to apply a promotional discount to the first payment instead.
  • Freeze Fee: The amount charged when a patient freezes (pauses) their membership.
  • Pass Processing Fee to Patient: Toggle on to apply your credit card surcharge to membership charges (setup fee, recurring billing, and freeze fee). Leave off to absorb the surcharge yourself. Processing fees are only added when the membership payment uses a credit card; debit cards and ACH bank transfers are not charged this fee.
  • Automatically send receipts: Turn on to email or text the patient an itemized receipt every time this plan bills — the enrollment charge and every renewal. Membership charges are left out of automatic receipts unless you turn this on, and your clinic also needs Automatically Send Receipts on under Settings > Billing > Receipts. If a patient pays for two plans at once and only one has this on, no receipt is sent.
  • Renews automatically: On by default. Turn it off for a plan that bills once at enrollment: the patient keeps their benefits for one billing cycle and the membership then expires instead of billing again. Changing it affects new enrollments only — current members keep the setting they enrolled with. While it’s off, Maximum Renewals is unused and Minimum Billing Cycles is capped at 1, since only one cycle is ever billed. If you don’t see this switch, ask Decoda support to turn on renewal control for your clinic.
  • Minimum Billing Cycles: The number of billing cycles a patient must complete before they can cancel.
  • Early Cancellation Fee: What you charge a patient who cancels before completing the minimum billing cycles. Leave it at 0 for no fee. See Cancel a member early.
  • Non-Refundable Amount: The amount of every membership charge — the enrollment charge and each renewal — your clinic expects to keep if that charge is later refunded. Enter it in dollars (for example, 49.75). It cannot be more than the plan’s price; if you type a larger number, or lower the price later, it drops to match the price. The same amount applies to every cycle. Leave it at 0 to allow full refunds. When someone refunds a membership charge, the refund window fills in the amount minus this figure. Staff can still refund more than that — the window tells them they’re crossing the non-refundable amount, but it does not stop them.
  • Maximum Renewals: The number of times the membership renews after enrollment before it expires automatically. The signup charge is not counted as a renewal, so a value of 1 means the patient is billed at enrollment and renewed once (two charges in total). Set to 0 for unlimited.
  • Invoice Rule Set: Select the rule set used to create an invoice when a member becomes delinquent (a payment fails). Choose None to skip automatic invoice creation.
  • Text Color: Pick a color to visually distinguish this membership name in the platform.
  • Show in patient portal: On by default. Turn off to hide the plan from the patient portal’s enrollment list — patients won’t be able to browse or self-enroll, but staff can still assign it and existing members continue to see their plan.
4

Configure Fee Schedule

Set the recurring price and optional cycle-specific pricing overrides. See the Fee Schedule section below.
5

Set Billing Frequency

In the Billing Frequency section, set the Billing Cycle to choose how often the membership bills: Daily, Weekly, Biweekly, Every Four Weeks, Every Six Weeks, Every Ten Weeks, Every Twelve Weeks, Monthly, Quarterly, Every Four Months, Semi-Annually, or Yearly. If you have multiple bank accounts configured, use Deposit to to route membership payments — pick Bank account to always deposit to one specific account, or Sale location to deposit to whichever account is tied to the location where each member signed up. When you choose Sale location, also pick a Fallback bank account that’s used whenever a member’s sale location has no account of its own.
6

Configure Credits and Benefits

Set up patient credits, a global benefit, and the benefits the membership includes — benefits on specific items, whole categories, or item types, and choice groups a member picks one option from. See the sections below for details.
7

Save

Click Save Membership in the top right corner. The membership is immediately available for patient enrollment.

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Configure a Fee Schedule

The fee schedule lets you set different prices for specific billing cycles, which is useful for introductory pricing or promotional periods.
  • Cycle-Specific Prices: Click Add Cycle-Specific Price to override the price for a specific cycle number (e.g., Cycle 1 at $0, Cycle 2 at $50).
  • Going-Forward Price: The standard recurring price that applies to all cycles without a specific override. If no cycle-specific prices are defined, this is the membership price.
For example, you could set Cycle 1 to $0 (free trial), Cycle 2 to $25 (half price), and $50 going forward.

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Set Up Credits and Benefits

Memberships can include multiple types of benefits that apply to enrolled patients.
New benefits are only issued while the membership is active. Whether a patient can still redeem already-earned benefits at checkout depends on the current status — see When membership benefits stop being redeemable for the full breakdown by status.

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Patient Credits

A dollar amount credited to the patient’s account each billing cycle. Credits can be used toward any purchase. Configure the credit amount in the Patient Credits field. Banking Options: Enable Rollover Unused so unused credits carry over to the next billing cycle instead of disappearing. For example, if the membership includes $50/month in credits and the patient only uses $30, the remaining $20 rolls to next month. Optionally set a Rollover Expiry in days to automatically expire banked credits after a specified period. Leave blank for no expiry. Use Renewal Cycle to control how often new credits are issued — enter a number of billing cycles between re-issuances (for example, 3 to refresh credits every three cycles), or leave blank to refresh every cycle.

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Global Benefit

A blanket percentage off all services for membership holders. Set the percentage in the Global Benefit field (0-100%).

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Benefits

Everything else the membership includes lives in the Benefits section. Each benefit applies to one of three things:
  • Item — one specific service, product, or package.
  • Category — everything in a category, including its subcategories. A benefit on “Injectables” also covers items filed under “Botox” or “Dysport”.
  • Item type — everything of a kind, such as all products or all services.
1

Add a benefit

Click Add Benefit. A panel opens from the side — the same one used for package benefits. Under Applies To, choose Specific Item, Category, Item Type, or All Items, then pick the item, category, or type.You can also click + Create new item or package to create a catalog item without leaving the page.
2

Set what the member gets

In the same panel, set a Benefit Amount (a fixed dollar amount) or a Benefit Percentage — one or the other, not both. Use 100% to include something at no cost. Set Quantity to how many times the member can use it each billing cycle, or 0 for unlimited.
3

Configure rollover

Set Expiry (Days) for how long unused uses last — leave it empty and they never expire. Use Renewal Cycle to issue new uses every few billing cycles instead of every cycle (leave blank for every cycle). Click Create Benefit to add it.
4

Change a benefit later

Each benefit shows as a row with its target, value, uses per cycle, and rollover. Click the pencil to reopen the panel and edit it, or the bin to remove it.
A benefit set to 100% off should have a number of uses. Leave uses blank for unlimited free usage, or enter a number to cap how many times it’s included per cycle.
What your patients see: At checkout, membership benefits are applied automatically. The patient sees the original price crossed out with the discounted price below it. Staff don’t need to manually apply anything.

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Choice Groups

A choice group is a set of benefits the member picks one of each cycle, instead of getting all of them. Choosing one expires the others for that cycle. Options in a group can apply to items, categories, or item types — and you can mix them. For example, a plan that includes one facial a month can offer a choice between the Signature Facials category and the Peels category, so the member picks a treatment from either group but not both.
1

Create the group

Click Add choice group in the Benefits section. Give it a name — members see this name at checkout, so use something like “Monthly Facial”.
2

Add options

Click Add option inside the group. The same side panel opens, and anything you create there becomes an option in that group. A group needs at least two options.To reuse a benefit you already set up, use the Group menu on that benefit’s row and pick this group.
3

Set each option

Every option needs a benefit and a quantity of at least one — unlimited uses can’t be offered as a choice. Expiry and renewal aren’t set per option: the group’s Rollover for this group applies to all of them.
4

Configure group rollover

Rollover for this group — including Rollover Unused, Rollover Expiry, and the Renewal Cycle that controls how often the choice is offered again — is set once and applies to every option in the group.
To take a benefit out of a group without losing it, open it and click Move out of group — it becomes a standalone benefit. The ✕ on the group ungroups every option at once: nothing is deleted, each option stays as its own benefit. Group names have to be filled in and can’t repeat, since the name is how the group is identified.

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Require an Enrollment Form

You can attach a form that patients must complete before they’re enrolled — useful for membership agreements, consent, or terms. In the membership editor’s Enrollment Form section, pick a Required Form from the list (search and select a form). Choose None to require no form. When a required form is set:
  • If staff enroll the patient and the form is sent for the patient to complete later, the member is created with an Awaiting Form status. Their membership benefits — credits and item benefits — don’t start until the form is submitted.
  • Once the patient submits the form, the membership activates automatically.
The form can also write this plan’s own name, price, billing frequency and terms into its wording, so one agreement can serve several plans and still show each patient the right figures. A form like that is sent from the membership — use the ⋯ menu beside a member and choose Send Form or Resend Form. See Membership Details in Forms. If the form includes a Payment Methods block with a required Payment Method question (see Form Structure), the card the patient saves on the form is attached to the membership automatically — staff don’t need to capture a payment method during enrollment. Save the membership before sending the form so the saved method can flow back in when the form is submitted.

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Enroll a Patient

1

Open Enrollment Page

From the memberships list, click the actions menu (gear icon) on any membership and select Add New Member. Or click Add Membership from a patient’s profile.
2

Select Patient and Membership

Search for and select a patient. If navigating from a specific membership, it is pre-selected; otherwise, choose from the list of active memberships.
3

Choose Sold By Provider

In the Sold By Provider section, optionally select the provider who sold this membership. Leave it blank if you don’t want to attribute the sale.
4

Set Schedule and Billing Dates

In the Schedule & Billing section:
  • Benefits Start Date: When the patient begins receiving membership benefits. Type a date or use shortcuts like “today”, “tomorrow”, or “next week”.
  • Next Billing Date: When the recurring cycle first bills. Defaults to one billing cycle after the benefits start date (so a monthly plan starting today next bills in a month) — never the signup day itself. Pick a later date to anchor the recurring cycle to a specific day (for example, sign up June 15 with the next billing on July 1 so future charges land on the 1st).
  • Defer today’s charge: Turn on to push the recurring charge to the next billing date. Leave off to charge today (full or prorated) and still start the cycle on the next billing date you picked. If the plan has a setup fee, that fee is still charged today — deferring moves the recurring price, not the one-time enrollment fee. The patient’s benefits start right away, so the fee is due right away. A plan with a promotional discount instead of a setup fee has nothing to collect today, so nothing is charged. If the plan also has an enrollment form attached, Send via SMS and Send via Email are unavailable while both a setup fee and Defer today’s charge apply — the fee has to be taken on this screen. Use Fill In Person or Show on Display, or turn Defer today’s charge off.
  • Prorate First Payment: Appears when the start date is in the future or the next billing date is off-cycle, and today’s charge is not deferred. Toggle on to adjust the first charge based on how far into the billing cycle the membership starts. When Defer today’s charge is on, the toggle is hidden because there’s nothing to prorate against today.
Some clinics have Defer today’s charge turned on by default. Staff can turn it off for an enrollment when the patient should pay today.The Enrollment Summary on the right shows when benefits start, what’s due today, the date and amount of the first recurring charge, and the ongoing price. When a setup fee is being collected on a deferred enrollment, it appears as Today’s charge (setup fee) with the deferred cycle listed separately, so the two amounts are never confused.
5

Set Up Payment Method

The payment options shown depend on whether today’s charge is deferred or immediate. Free memberships skip this step entirely.For immediate billing (charging today):
  • Pick from the patient’s saved payment methods, or enter a new card in the payment terminal.
  • Check Save Payment Method to save a newly-entered card for future recurring charges. Make sure you have the patient’s consent.
For deferred billing when the plan has a setup fee:
  • The fee is collected now, so the payment terminal is offered exactly as it is for immediate billing. Pick a saved payment method or enter a new card.
  • If the card is declined, the enrollment doesn’t go through and you’ll see the decline — nothing is saved and the patient isn’t enrolled. Fix the card and try again.
For deferred billing with no setup fee (nothing due today):
  • Select one of the patient’s saved payment methods, or click Add Card to add a new one. A saved payment method is required to continue.
If the chosen payment method is ACH (or the patient already has another active membership billed to ACH), an ACH Warning appears. ACH payments take several business days to validate and may fail due to insufficient funds, so membership benefits don’t start until the payment clears. A credit or debit card is recommended for recurring membership billing.
Apple Pay and Google Pay aren’t offered for memberships. Digital-wallet cards are one-time use and can’t be charged on a recurring schedule, so they can’t be saved for a membership’s future billing. When you add a card for a membership — whether during enrollment or through a payment link you send the patient — only a regular card or bank account is offered. This keeps staff from saving a wallet card that would then block the recurring draw. One-time payment links (not tied to a membership) still offer Apple Pay as usual.
6

Complete Enrollment

Click the action button at the bottom. Its label changes based on the enrollment type, and always names the amount being taken now:
  • Enroll Patient — for free ($0) memberships.
  • Enroll Patient — first charge — for deferred billing with nothing due today.
  • Charge $X & Enroll — first charge — for deferred billing with a setup fee, where $X is the fee.
  • Charge $X & Enroll — for immediate billing, where $X is the total charged today.
A patient cannot be enrolled in the same membership twice if they already have an active, frozen, or delinquent status on that membership.

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Manage Enrolled Members

Click the active members count on any membership row, or select View Members from the actions menu, to open the members page. The members table shows each enrolled patient with their status, start/end dates, billing details, sold-by provider, and recent activity. Use the filters to narrow by Name, Status (Active, Frozen, Cancelled, Expired, Delinquent), or Start Date.

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Member Actions

Click the actions menu on any member row to access these options:
  • Freeze Membership: Pause billing temporarily. You can schedule a freeze for a future date and optionally set an auto-unfreeze date. A freeze fee is charged if configured on the membership.
  • Unfreeze Membership: Resume billing for a frozen membership.
  • Change Payment Method: Update the card on file for future recurring charges.
  • Change Billing Date: Adjust when the next billing cycle occurs.
  • Deposit Account: Override which bank account this specific member’s payments deposit to, without changing the plan or affecting other members. Open the member’s row on the patient’s memberships tab and pick an account under Deposit Account. The line under the picker shows what’s resolving today — an override, a plan-level bank account, or a location-based route. Choose the “Uses plan default” option to clear the override and go back to whatever the membership plan resolves to. If the member has a saved card that’s tied to specific merchants, only the compatible accounts appear in the list.
  • Cancel Membership: Permanently end the membership. Requires a comment explaining the reason. Available for active, frozen, and delinquent members. The cancel window has an Archive unused benefits checkbox — leave it on to make unused credits and benefits unusable right away, or turn it off to let the patient keep redeeming them until each benefit’s own expiry date. If the member owes an early cancellation fee, the window offers to collect it — see Cancel a member early.
  • Process Payment: (Delinquent members only) Manually collect a failed payment. When an outstanding renewal is paid in full—here or through checkout, POS, a payment link, or the patient portal—the membership returns to Active and receives new benefits. Paying keeps the member on their original billing day: the next billing date stays on the same day of the cycle (for example, always the 1st) rather than shifting to the day the payment was made. If the member was past due for more than one cycle, the missed cycles are skipped—they are not charged for the time they lapsed—and the next billing date lands on the next upcoming occurrence of their billing day.
  • Reactivate Membership: (Delinquent members only) Restore the membership to active status.
  • View Member: Navigate to the patient’s profile, opened to their memberships tab.

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Cancel a Member Early

If the plan has an Early Cancellation Fee and the member hasn’t finished their Minimum Billing Cycles, the cancel window shows Charge early cancellation fee with the amount owed, already ticked. The fee is collected before the membership ends. Untick the box to cancel without charging. A card on file isn’t needed. If the patient has saved payment methods, pick one under Select from a Saved Payment Method; otherwise — or if you’d rather not use a saved one — enter the card or bank details under Enter Payment Details. Tick Save Payment Method first if the patient wants it kept on file for next time. The fee only applies to an immediate cancellation. If you set a Cancellation Date in the future, the window tells you the fee won’t be charged — clear the date to collect it now.

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Bulk Member Actions

To act on several members at once, tick the checkbox at the left of each row in the members table — a bulk-action bar appears with the count selected. Pick one of:
  • Freeze — freeze every selected member with one reason and one optional unfreeze date.
  • Rerun billing — re-attempt the most recent charge for each selected member. Useful after a card update on file.
  • Adjust billing date — set every selected member’s next billing date to the same day, with one shared reason.
  • Deactivate — cancel every selected membership. Requires a reason and can’t be undone.
Each bulk action shows a confirmation window with the count of members affected before it runs.

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Member Statuses

A membership becomes Frozen when staff use Freeze Membership from the member’s actions menu — either immediately or scheduled to start on a future date. While frozen, recurring billing is paused and the patient stops receiving membership benefits (credits and item benefits) until the membership is reactivated. The patient sees a Frozen status pill on their billing page in the patient portal. To resume, use Unfreeze Membership from the actions menu, or set an automatic unfreeze date when freezing so the membership reactivates on its own.
Automatic alerts on delinquency. When a member’s recurring charge fails and the membership flips to Delinquent, Decoda posts a Membership Delinquent alert and creates a follow-up task so someone on the billing team owns the recovery. The task is required — it can’t be turned off — but who receives the alert is controlled in Settings > My Decoda > Notifications.

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When membership benefits stop being redeemable

A benefit that came from a membership stops being redeemable when:
  • The membership is Frozen, Pending (initial payment hasn’t settled yet), or Awaiting Form. The benefit is paused; it becomes redeemable again the moment that status clears.
  • The membership is Cancelled or Expired. Decoda archives the patient’s unused membership benefits when either status is set, so they stop appearing at checkout. You can re-enable them later by picking Restore membership benefits in Reverse side effects on a refund or charge deletion.
  • The benefit has reached its expiry date or its quantity limit.
Delinquent and Inactive memberships keep their already-earned benefits available until each benefit hits its own expiry or quantity limit. Patient credit balances aren’t archived on cancellation or expiry either — any credit the patient has already accrued stays on their account until it reaches the credit’s own expiry.
Archiving a patient stops their membership billing. When you archive a patient, any membership that is still billing (active, frozen, or delinquent) is automatically cancelled, so the patient is never charged again. The next billing date is cleared and the cancellation is recorded in the membership’s history. Archived patients are also skipped by the nightly billing run as an extra safeguard.

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Edit a Membership

From the memberships list, click the actions menu on any membership and select Edit Membership, or click the membership name to expand it, then navigate to the edit page. The editor contains the same sections used during creation.
Benefit changes apply to current members. When you update a membership’s benefits, the changes automatically take effect for all active, frozen, and delinquent members:
  • Changed benefits (e.g., new amount or percentage) update each member’s benefit while preserving their remaining usage when possible. If you reduce a quantity limit, remaining usage is capped at the new limit.
  • Removed benefits are no longer available to current members.
  • New benefits are issued to all current members immediately.
Benefits that haven’t changed are not affected.

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Duplicate a Membership

To quickly create a similar plan, click the actions menu on any membership and select Duplicate. A copy is created with the same settings, which you can then rename and modify.

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Bulk Edit Memberships

Select multiple memberships using the checkboxes in the table. A bulk actions bar appears at the bottom with two options:
  • Edit: Opens a drawer with two tabs:
    • Details: Update Name, Description, and Price for all selected memberships at once. Only fields you modify are applied.
    • Tags: Apply or remove tags. Click an existing tag to apply it to every selected membership, or type a name into Create new tag… and press Enter to make a new one. Tags are shared across memberships, services, products, and medications.
  • Archive: Archive all selected memberships simultaneously.

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View Membership Details

Click the expand arrow next to any membership name in the list to view an inline summary showing:
  • Financial Details: Price (or fee schedule), setup fee, freeze fee, early cancellation fee, non-refundable amount, and patient credit amount.
  • Membership Stats: Active member count, total lifetime revenue, billing frequency, and cancellation policy.
  • Members: Expandable list of enrolled patients with search and pagination.
  • Benefits: Expandable list of all configured benefits (grouped and individual) with search and pagination.

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Advanced Configuration

Use the Group By dropdown above the memberships table to organize memberships by billing frequency (Monthly, Weekly, Yearly, etc.). This helps you see all plans of the same type together.
Use the filter bar to search memberships by Name or by Benefit Item name. Combine filters to quickly find specific plans.
Each membership row in the table displays its Total Revenue — the lifetime sum of all payments collected from enrolled members. Use this to evaluate the financial performance of each plan.
To discontinue a membership, click the actions menu and select Archive. Memberships with active members cannot be archived — you must cancel or move all enrolled patients first. Archived memberships no longer appear in enrollment flows but historical billing data is preserved.
  • View Memberships — Required to view the Memberships page, membership details, and enrolled members.
  • Process Payments — Required to enroll patients (since enrollment processes a payment) and to manually collect failed payments for delinquent members.
  • Process Refunds — Required to process refunds on membership payments.
Admin users have full access to all membership features by default. Membership creation and editing within Settings requires settings-level access.
If your organization has multiple bank accounts (merchant accounts), you can route membership payments in the Billing Frequency section of the membership editor. Pick Bank account to always deposit to the same account, or Sale location to deposit to whichever account is tied to each member’s sign-up location (with a Fallback bank account for locations that don’t have one). You can also override the account for a single member on the patient’s memberships tab — see Deposit Account under Member Actions.