1. The six edges that decide whether a programme survives
Nobody loses money on the happy path. A card charges, a member attends, everyone is content. Every system handles that. Here is what to make a vendor show you instead.
| The edge | What goes wrong | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| A card declines | Nobody notices for a month, then two months are owed and the conversation is awkward | The failure is visible the day it happens, the member is told, and the retry is automatic |
| A member pauses | Someone cancels the plan and rebuilds it later, losing the start date and the price | Pause and resume, keeping the original terms |
| Unredeemed sessions | A package sold in March with four sessions left is invisible until the patient asks | A balance on the chart that the front desk can see at check-in |
| A price change | Existing members are silently repriced, or are stuck at the old price forever | New price for new members, a deliberate decision for existing ones |
| Upgrades mid-cycle | Cancel and re-add, double charging or missing a month | Change the tier, prorate, carry on |
| Cancelling | The plan stops but the card keeps charging, or stops and refunds a month it should not | An end date that both sides understood before anyone signed |
2. The agreement has to come before the money
This is the one we would argue hardest about. A recurring charge against a card on file, with no signed agreement saying what the member bought and how it ends, is a chargeback waiting to happen and in several states a consumer-protection problem.
In Aminova a membership cannot start billing until its agreement is signed. That order is deliberate and not configurable, because every clinic that has asked us to reverse it was about to make the same mistake: sell the plan at the desk, take the card, mean to send the paperwork, and never send it.
Ask any vendor the plain version: can a staff member start a recurring charge on this system without a signed agreement existing? If the answer is yes, that is a policy you will have to enforce by training instead of by software.
3. Packages are not memberships, and systems conflate them
A membership is time-based: they pay monthly and get whatever the tier includes. A package is count-based: they pay once for six sessions and draw them down. They fail differently and they are accounted for differently, and a system that models only one of them will make you fake the other.
| Membership | Package | |
|---|---|---|
| Bills | On a cadence, indefinitely | Once, up front |
| Runs out when | They cancel | The sessions are used |
| Front desk needs to see | Whether this month is paid | How many sessions remain |
| The awkward case | A failed card mid-programme | Sessions unused a year later |
| Where the money sits | Earned as the month passes | Taken up front and owed until redeemed |
That last row is the one that catches people. Money taken for sessions not yet delivered is a liability, and a clinic selling a lot of packages has a number on its books that no dashboard in the software is going to tell them about unless the software tracks redemption properly.
4. Where each system actually fits
Memberships are a crowded feature, and the vendors come at them from three different directions.
Wellness and studio-style memberships — class packs, visit credits, a front desk that checks people in all day. Mindbody, Boulevard and Zenoti sell into high-footfall wellness and spa operations.
Coaching programmes — where the membership is the relationship and the deliverable is check-ins rather than a procedure. Healthie and Practice Better are built around that.
Aesthetics loyalty and pre-paid treatment plans — tox and filler packages, loyalty tiers, retail attached. PatientNow, Pabau and Aesthetic Record sell into that combination.
Memberships that include a prescription — a monthly programme fee where part of the value is the medication, which means the money and the clinical plan have to stay joined up, and the charge has to route to the right rail. This is the case Aminova was built for, and the one where we would put ourselves forward.
Where we are the wrong choice: if your memberships are studio-style with high-volume class check-in, if you need a retail point-of-sale with a cash drawer, or if the loyalty mechanics are the product rather than the care. Those are real requirements, and the systems above do them properly.
5. Where the money actually goes
One thing worth being direct about, because it is a question clinics are right to ask of any platform holding a card on file: Aminova is not in the payment flow. The merchant account is the clinic’s own, the agreement is between the clinic and the processor, and funds settle to the clinic’s bank without passing through us. We take no percentage of a membership.
⚠️ Payouts, statements and dispute handling live in the processor’s own portal rather than in Aminova. We would rather say that plainly than build a second, worse copy of a screen you already have.
6. Frequently asked questions
What happens when a card fails?
The charge is retried on a schedule, the failure is visible the day it happens rather than at month end, and the member can be prompted to update the card themselves from the patient app. Nothing is silently written off.
Can a member pause for a month?
Yes, and resume on the original terms. The alternative — cancel and rebuild — is how clinics lose a member’s start date and original price, and it is why people end up with a spreadsheet beside the system.
Do existing members get repriced when we raise prices?
Not automatically. A price change applies to new members, and moving existing ones is a deliberate decision you make rather than a side effect. Getting this backwards is a very fast way to churn your best members.
Can a membership include medication?
Yes, and this is the case the product is built around. The programme fee and the medication can sit on one plan, with each line settling where it is underwritten to settle, so the patient sees one charge and the clinic stays on the right side of its processor’s terms.
Do you take a cut of membership revenue?
No. Not out of your rate and not out of your settlement. We charge a flat monthly fee for the software and nothing per transaction.