If you would like to offer your customer the opportunity to register for one class (or multiple classes) for free, without purchasing a membership, you have a few options to do so.
Provide them with an account credit which can be used to pay the drop-in fee for their class registration.
Provide them with a Pack which offers a specific number of class credits.
Add them to that class directly from the business side
Provide them with an account credit which can be used to pay the drop-in fee for their class registration
If a class has drop-in's enabled, you can credit the customer the cost of that drop-in so that when they go to register for that class, they can tick the option to use their available credit instead of making a payment.
You can find our guide on how you can add an account credit to your customers account here: Add an account credit to a customer profile
Pro-Tip!
This option is more suitable for offering your customers access to single classes as opposed to multiple classes, because providing them with a £10 credit for a single class (example) makes more sense than providing them with a £50 credit for five classes.
If you're going to be offering customers multiple class registrations for free, the next option might be more suitable.
Provide them with a Pack which offers a specific number of class credits
You can create a Pack membership which offers a specific number of class credits, and they can use the class credits in this pack to register for classes. Customers would not be able to purchase this on their own, and you would need to add it to their account on their behalf.
Because this Pack is provided to your customers for free, there are some details you may want to pay some closer attention to when creating this Pack, such as:
Name: This needs to be accurate enough for the customer to understand what this is (and which classes it can be used for), but general enough so that it can be used for multiple scenarios (e.g. Good will offers, and refunds, e.t.c.)
Description: You don't necessarily need to add a description, but if you do you can outline that these class credits can be used when registering for a session, and also highlight the validity period when necessary. (e.g. "Expires after 60 days")
Status: This needs to be "For Sale" so that it appears as an option for you when adding a membership to the customers account.
Visibility: This membership needs to be "Hidden" so that it's not visible on the Memberships page on your customer site.
How Customers Purchase: Set this to "Contact us to purchase" so that once the Pack expires or is used up, customers are not able to "renew" their membership on their own.
Price: Customers are unable to purchase this membership on their own, so the price of this membership is not important, so you can set any amount you please here.
Usability: Here you can select what event types this Pack can be used for (Classes, Appointments, Courses) but also which specific events they can be used for.
It's important to note that you might want to create a Pack for all classes, specific events, or even separate them per price, but once you create a Pack and offer it to a customer they will be able to register for any event that Pack gives them access to, so you may want to create these Packs ad-hoc, or include the events these are for in the name or description.
If you need to edit the pack in the future you can do so in order to include or exclude class types from the usability.
Pack Size: You can select the default number of class credits this Pack offers, and it would be advisable to add more than one (usually the maximum you might need) as usage can be deducted from the pack when adding it to a customers account.
Then, when adding this Pack to the customers account, when you arrive at the checkout, you can select to "Edit" this so you can adjust the "initial uses" and the "Price".
Initial Uses: If the Pack you created is for 5 class credits (example) and you would like to offer the customer 2 class credits, then you would need to set the Initial Uses to 3, and this would deduct 3 of the class credits from the Pack of 5.
Price: Set this to zero so that the customer is not charged.
Add the customer to a class directly from the business side
You can add a customer to a class on the business side for free, by going to that class in your calendar, selecting the option to "Add Customer", and then select the option to "Register for free (Comp the visit)".
