Cobot provides flexible ways to charge new members right away.
Charging Members in Advance:
The easiest way to get your money upfront is to delay the member's first regular billing date and generate a free-form invoice for immediate billing.
If they are registering themselves:
1. For each plan, turn on the setting that you will confirm new members: Setup » Plan » edit Plan » New Members have to be approved.
2. Have them register for the plan they would like and set up their payment method.
3. You will then receive an email notification to confirm their membership
4. Click on the link in the email to confirm their membership or to go to their member profile.
5. Confirm the member.
6. Set a start date when they should have access to the space, and the first regular invoice date one month later.
7. Generate a free-form invoice for the member as their first month's payment and have the date be today. Go to the Member Profile » Invoicing » drop-down menu » New free-form Invoice. After you have created the invoice, click "Charge Now" (or "Record Payment" if they are paying with cash or a cheque - see "Manual payment tracking").
Now they will get access to the space on their start date and their regular billing will begin one month later.
If you as an Admin are registering the Member:
1. Register them for a plan and set up a payment method, but set a start date when they should have access to the space, and a first regular invoice date one month later (or whenever the billing should start).
2. Uncheck the prorated invoice box.
3. Generate a free-form invoice (Member Profile » Invoicing » dropdown » New free-form Invoice) for the member as their first month's payment and set it to today's date. After you have created the invoice, click "Charge Now.
4. Now they will get access to the space on their start date and their regular billing will begin one month later.
Charging Members at Sign up
You are able to charge members at the time of sign up, but it depends on the member start date, when the member enters their billing details, and how members sign up.
Members sign themselves up:
If your members are signing themselves up via your Cobot Homepage, or via a link that you sent them, Cobot will generate an invoice/charge them for their membership fees on the date they have chosen as their membership start date.
For example: if a new member signs up today and today is their start date, then Cobot will create an invoice for their membership fees immediately. If the new member signs up today, but their membership does not start until a date in the future, then the invoice will only be created on that date.
To automate this process, you will first need to connect Cobot to a payment gateway. If your Cobot account is not connected to a payment gateway and there is no payment method on file for that member, then you will need to process payment on that invoice manually.
After you have set this up, you can make it mandatory for your members to enter in a payment method before they can access their member portal. To do this, go to Customize » Features » Payments and activate one of the options there.
Administrators adding Members
If you add the member manually, Cobot will still generate their first invoice on their membership start date as outlined above.
You can then add their payment method to their member profile and process payment on the invoice. To do this, go to Invoicing » Past Invoices » Charge.