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Memberships & renewals

How membership types, a household's membership, renewals and the volunteer rate fit together.

Membership types are templates

A membership type defines the deal: how long it lasts (duration), max concurrent loans, the loan period and max renewals, the membership fee, an optional one-off joining fee, and optionally volunteer sessions required. You can offer several (e.g. Standard, Concession, Volunteer rate, Short-term). Editing a type creates a new version, so existing members keep the terms they signed up under until they renew.

A household's membership

When a household joins on a type, their membership starts that day and expires after the type's duration. They stay active right up to the expiry date, and renewing extends from the expiry (not the renewal day) — so nothing is lost by renewing early.

Fees

The membership fee is charged each period; the joining fee is a one-off the first time a household joins. Concession types offer a reduced rate. Recording and refunding these is covered in Fees & payments.

The volunteer rate

A type can require volunteer sessions — a discounted rate in exchange for helping out N times. That's an obligation tracked against the membership; it's separate from whether the person can volunteer, which is set by their role. See Roles, members & volunteers.

Member statuses & the lifecycle

A household carries two statuses that are easy to confuse — keep them apart:

Account status — the state of the household's account:

• Active — everything normal.
• Suspended — a temporary hold. They can't borrow, but the membership keeps running (the expiry date doesn't pause) and any balance or held bond is untouched. Reverse it with Reactivate account.
• Cancelled — the account has been ended (see End membership below).

Membership status — derived from the membership's dates:

• Active — valid right now (shown green, with the "valid to" date).
• Expired — the term has run out (shown in amber so it's never mistaken for current). The member can't borrow until they renew.
• Starts soon — a membership with a future start date.

The actions on the member page

• Reactivate account — lifts a suspension/cancellation and restores access. It does not renew an expired membership.
• Enrol / Re-enrol — starts a new paid membership period (charges the fee, plus joining fee/bond if the type has them) and sets a fresh expiry. This is how you renew a lapsed member.
• Suspend account — the temporary hold described above.
• End membership — closes the current membership today (they can no longer borrow) and cancels the account. Balance and bond remain until you settle them; borrowing again needs a fresh re-enrolment.

The short version: Reactivate fixes access; Re-enrol fixes membership. An expired member usually needs Re-enrol, not Reactivate.

Pausing a membership

A pausable membership type (the tick is on the type, per version) lets a family take a break without losing the time they paid for. ToyHive records the pause and nothing else: borrowing is not blocked, nothing is put on hold, the volunteering clock keeps running and no payment schedule moves. What it does do is add the paused days to the end date when the pause ends, so the family gets back the time they did not use.

Staff pause and unpause from the household page, and can pause for any length, any number of times. Members can do it themselves from their portal when you fill in the two limits on the membership type:

• Pauses a member may start, per membership period — three is a sensible start.
• Longest pause a member may take — ninety days covers a term plus the holidays either side.

Leave either box empty and pausing stays staff-only: the member is shown a line asking them to get in touch instead of a button. The limits never apply to staff.

A member can also set a planned return date, and their membership starts again by itself on that date. They get a reminder three days before, a confirmation when the pause starts, and a "welcome back" email with the new end date when it ends — all switchable under Settings → Notifications. A staff pause sends the same confirmation, which is what you want for a break arranged over the phone.

One thing worth saying to a family out loud: a pause is not an amnesty. Toys already out are still due back on their usual dates, and overdue fees carry on. The portal says so when they have toys out.

Enrolling a party-hire hirer

If someone already on file as a casual hirer (from a non-member party hire) joins the library, just enrol them: their record becomes an ordinary member household, keeping their past hires, ledger and history — one household, not a member account beside a shadow hirer. A business stays a business even with a membership. See Party hire & hire rates.

Organisation memberships

Childcare centres, playgroups, kindergartens and schools borrow differently from a family — more toys, for longer — and most libraries charge them accordingly. ToyHive models that with an audience on each membership type: Families (the default, and what every existing type is) or Organisations.

Setting one up. Settings → Membership types → New type, then tick Organisation membership. Price it however you like — a higher fee, a bigger max concurrent loans, a longer loan period. You can change an existing type's audience at any time from the same page: press Edit next to its name and tick or untick the same box.

What the audience actually does:

• Organisation types never appear on your public join page or in the member portal — an organisation is enrolled by staff, from its household page.
• A household only ever sees the types it is eligible for. On a family's page the picker lists your family types; on an organisation's page it lists your organisation types. There is no way to pick the wrong one, and the server refuses it even if something tries.
• If an organisation has no organisation-audience type to join, its enrol form says so and links you to Settings rather than showing an empty dropdown.

Creating an organisation household. Members → Add household, then set Household type to Organisation. You give the business name (that becomes the household name) and a contact person — the people on the household are its Contacts, not adults, and there is no children roll. Organisations never get portal access, so everything goes through the desk. The household type can't be changed afterwards; if you pick the wrong one, delete it and start again.

Where the numbers go. An organisation membership is real revenue, but a childcare centre is not one of your member families — so the dashboard shows an Organisation members figure beside Financial members rather than adding the two together, and the grant acquittal pack carries Organisation memberships as its own line. In Reports, the Memberships area has a Household type dimension and filter, so you can report membership fee revenue by type of household. (ToyHive's own billing counts organisations as members — that is separate from these member-facing figures.)

Changing an audience later. Safe: everyone who is currently a member keeps the exact terms they signed up under. It applies to future enrolments — including renewals, in the same way deactivating a type stops it being renewed onto. So if you flip a family type to Organisations, families on it will need re-enrolling onto a family type at their next renewal, and a household paying by saved card gets the usual "auto-renewal couldn't be completed" notice instead of a silent renewal.

Redeeming a gift voucher. Someone can buy any active, publicly-available membership type as a gift. The person it was given to enters the code in the join wizard where it asks for payment (the voucher pays for the membership in full, joining fee and bond included), or hands the code to you at the desk and you enter it in the Voucher code box when you enrol them. Either way the membership is created on the terms frozen when the gift was bought, so a price rise in between costs the recipient nothing. See Gift memberships for the whole flow.