Somebody who is not a member yet joins through your joining link. It is one link for the whole club and it names nobody, so it is safe on a poster, in a newsletter or on your own website.
You will find it on the Links tab under Club, beside the other two.
They open it, see your categories and prices, fill in who is joining, and set up the Direct Debit there and then. A family applies once, for all of them.
What you do with an application
An application is a request, not a member. It waits for you, because a stranger typed it and the club decides.
Open it and you get each name on the form set against your own register. Two things can happen:
- You already have that person. Say so, and the application is linked to the record you have rather than making a second one.
- You do not. Accepting makes them.
Somebody who already holds this year is linked like anybody else. They simply get no second subscription.
A family who have joined before
They go back into the household they already have, and it is one payment as it was last time.
If the people you linked turn out to be in two different households, you are asked which. Nothing is merged for you, because merging moves a payer and possibly a live Direct Debit.
How they get in afterwards
The code that signs them in is emailed beside the joining, never in front of it.
Joining the club is what they came to do. Nobody should have to prove an address before they can find out what membership costs.
If you would rather not take applications
A joining link needs an open membership year. Without one it refuses everybody who follows it.
The Links tab says so rather than hiding the link, and gives you the button that opens a year. A club that does not want to be applied to simply does not hand the link out.