Membership Plans
Define your membership tiers, recurring pricing and billing cadence, included benefits, and delivery costs so Nabu can count your members and their recurring billing correctly.
What Nabu needs to know about memberships
Clients pay a recurring fee in exchange for benefits like included services, discounts, or store credit. Nabu needs to know what clients pay and how often, and what it costs you to deliver the benefits.
There are two parts to setting up a membership: the plan itself and the benefits inside it.
Setting up a membership plan
Each plan has the following fields:
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Plan name | Use the same name your booking software uses (e.g., "Gold Membership", "Glow Club") |
| Recurring price | What the client pays each billing cycle |
| Billing cadence | How often the recurring price is charged: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, twice a year, yearly, or one time |
| Setup fee | One-time fee charged when a client joins. Enter 0 if you don't charge one. |
| Plan type, Term and Renewal | What kind of plan it is, how many billing cycles it runs, and what happens when the term ends |
| Active | Whether you currently sell this plan |
Recurring Billing on the Financials page uses the recurring price and billing cadence. A plan left without either shows no figure rather than $0.
The plan name must match your booking software exactly — or close enough that Nabu can link membership sales coming in from your sales data to the right plan definition here.
Adding benefits to a plan
Benefits are what members get in exchange for their monthly fee. Nabu supports three types:
| Benefit type | Example | What to enter |
|---|---|---|
| Included service | 1 HydraFacial per month | Service name, quantity (1), estimated fulfillment cost |
| Service discount | 20% off all injectables | Discount percentage, which services it applies to |
| Store credit | $25 monthly credit toward anything | Dollar amount per month |
For each benefit, enter the estimated cost to deliver it. This is the most important field for profitability.
Why fulfillment cost matters
A membership priced at $99/month that includes a HydraFacial sounds good — until you realize the HydraFacial costs you $80 in labor and supplies to deliver. If the HydraFacial normally retails for $175, the retail value of that benefit is $175, but Nabu uses the $80 fulfillment cost to calculate margin.
This is the difference between knowing a membership looks like a deal for clients and knowing whether it's actually profitable for the business. Always enter your real cost to deliver, not the retail price of the benefit.
How memberships appear in sales data
When you import sales and visit history, membership-related transactions come in as two distinct types:
- MEMBERSHIP_SALE — a membership fee charged to a client (e.g., $99 charged on the 1st)
- MEMBERSHIP_REDEMPTION — when a member uses an included service credit or store credit
Nabu matches these to the plan definitions you set up here. If a membership plan name in your sales data doesn't match anything here, it will flag it for review.
These are billing records, not members. Who holds which membership, and since when, comes from each client's membership record: see Memberships.
Confirming this section
If you do not sell memberships, mark this section as Not Applicable — that removes it from your setup checklist. If you plan to launch memberships in the future, you can come back and set them up then.
Common questions
What if my membership includes a service that isn't in Services yet? Set up the membership plan and list the benefit — but you won't be able to enter an accurate fulfillment cost until the service is set up. Come back and update it after you complete the Services section.
What if my clients have different pricing than the standard plan? (e.g., grandfathered rates) Enter the current active plan(s) here. Legacy pricing for existing clients will show in their transaction history, but plan definitions reflect what's currently offered.
Do I need to enter every past member? Not here. This section defines what each plan includes. Each client's membership comes from your connected system, or you add it in the Clients section, one at a time or with the Client Memberships template. Sales & Visit History does not create memberships.
Services
How to set up your service menu in Nabu — including pricing, duration, and what goes into each service — so Nabu can calculate service-level profitability.
Packages
Set up prepaid service packages so Nabu tracks the cash you collect upfront separately from the revenue you earn as each session is redeemed.