How To Manage Session Access And Troubleshoot Failed Check-ins

Memberships and programs allow you to control who can attend which session, whether they are regular members or just visitors at the gym. In this article we'll go over the different options you have for managing session access, as well as how to troubleshoot when a member is not able to check-in to a session.

How Memberships Control Session Access

Memberships define the business relationship a member has with your gym - how much they pay, how often, and what access to gym services it provides them with. You can learn more about managing memberships here.

When we create or edit a membership option, the section that controls access to session is titled "Access to training":

First, we can set how often can a member check-in to class - either unlimited amount, or a limited number of sessions / days per week, month or year or purchase. Once the member has used up their sessions for the term, they will not be able to check-in to class until the next term starts. 

The "Per purchase" option is special, in which the term is the entire duration of the membership, and access will reset only when the membership is renewed. 

Next, we can limit access to specific programs and sessions. Members will only be able to access selected sessions or sessions in the programs that are selected (if you do not select specific sessions).

The above is one of the most common source of confusion when a member is not able to check-in, so we'll expand on that a bit. When you set up a session in your schedule, you can pick which program it belongs to, like so - 

The program the session is in needs to match the programs the member has access to for them to be able to check-in. Let's see how that looks in practice -

In the screenshot above, our member John James is unable to check-in to the "Late night rolls" class, since his membership (shown on the left) only allows access to the "Judo" program, while the "Late night rolls" class belongs to the "Brazilian Jiu Jitsu" program. 

If we add a new program to our account, we need to make sure we enable access to it in the relevant memberships.

Additional Attendance Control in the Attendance Settings

The attendance settings screen ("Members" from the main menu, then "Attendance" -> "Settings") offers additional control of when to allow members to check-in.

The first option - "Require active membership" needs to be enabled for our membership based controls to work. This includes tracking how many session a member has used from their membership - if you turn this option off, the system will not deduct sessions from a member's membership.

Most of the options are self explanatory, but there's a couple that have more nuance - 

• Require booking for bookable sessions - This option locks sessions that are marked as "Available for booking" to only people who booked it. That means that a member without a booking to a session that can be booked will not be able to check-in. 
• Members can only check-in before session starts - by default, we provide additional time for members to check-in after the official start time of the session, for up to 45 minutes after the session has ended (to allow late comers to join class immediately, and check-in after class is done). If you enable this setting, members will only be able to check-in before the session start time. 
• First membership payment required to check-in - If this option is enabled, members are only able to check-in once their first membership payment has been fully paid.
• Time to check-in before class - By default, sessions will be available to check-in for the entire day in advance. You can control that with this setting, by limiting the ability to check-in to class to a certain amount of time before it starts.

Membership Remaining Session count

Checking in to class and booking classes will reduce the remaining sessions for the membership that was used for it. Canceling a booking will return the session to the membership. You can disable this option by going to Settings → Members → Membership Settings and toggling off Deduct bookings from remaining sessions.

During check-in and booking, for oldest membership available is used to provide access, and its session count is reduced accordingly.

Note that staff members can check-in and book members even if there are no available memberships at the time, allowing the member to attend / book over their membership limit. This can happen as well if you uncheck “Has active membership” while using the multiple check-in feature, as no membership will be used for that attendance.

Members will receive an email stating that they have 0 sessions left when they’ve reached the end of their session count associated with their membership, even if an additional membership has been added to their account. We suggest renewing memberships in accounts instead of adding new ones to avoid any confusion with this notification.

Please note that for memberships with recurring payments on the same schedule as the membership access, sessions are counted from the last payment date. For example, for a membership that provides weekly access and has a weekly recurring payment, sessions will be counted every week from the last payment date. This is also the case for monthly recurring payments or any other payment schedule you have in place. We recommend keeping this in mind when reviewing a member’s session count.

Hopefully, you now have a better idea on how to manage access to your sessions and how to troubleshoot failed check-ins. If you run into a problem you cannot figure out on your own, please get in touch using the support button in the bottom right of the screen.