We help non-profit planetariums, museums and science centers focus on teaching the wonders of science and the universe to the communities they serve.
Astral is an open source application that helps non-profit educational organizations manage events, tickets, sales, visitors and memberships.
If you work in a non-profit planetarium, museum or science center and are struggling to find the right software to help you run things, Astral is what you are looking for.
Astral can help your organization manager memberships.
Start by creating one or more Membership Types in admin Settings for each membership package your organization offers. You will need to know:
name: give it a short name like Family or Individual.description: write a short description with, for example, who it is for.price: how much the memberhsip type will cost before tax.duration: how long the membership lasts, in days.max free secondaries: the maximum number of free secondaries allowed. Default is 0.max paid secondaries: Default is also 0. The maximum number of paid secondaries, each is charged the amount in...secondary price: the price per paid secondaryis active: if checked, makes it available as a membership type option for creating and reneweing memberships.is public: makes a membership type available for sale for the general public online. Make sure it is also active.
Knowing and configuring this is essential to get memberships right. Make sure you and your staff understand each setting before creating memberships.
Memberships have one primary by default and the sum of free and paid secondaries. For example (names are examples):
- Individual: 1 primary, 1 paid secondary (up to 2 people)
- Family: 1 primary, 3 free secondaries (up to 4 people)
- Sponsor: 1 primary, 3 free secondaries, 2 paid secondaries (up to 6 people)
Astral will always ask to fill all the free secondaries before asking for paid secondaries. Make sure to change the number of free and paid secondaries to adjust to what your organization wants.
Go to Memberships and then New Membership and fill out the form providing the following data:
The type of membership. Each type is supposed to have different benefits, set by your organization in settings.
Changing this for values already set will reset all other fields because Astral needs to recalculate what options to give users for all other fields.
The owner of the membership. In order to appear in as an option in the dropdown, individual must have an account.
The start date of the membership. This is automatically set based on today's date, but can be changed. Note that changing the start date will automatically change the end date based on the set length in days of the membership.
Memberships by default start at the time they are purchased and end at the end of the day of their duration. For example, if a 365 day membership was purchased on August 26 at 9:02 PM, it will start at that date and time and end at August 26 of the next year at 11:59:59 PM.
The end date of the membership. It is automatically set, can be overriden to any date.
Enter the payment, double check to make sure everything is to the customer liking and click Save. Only then the membership will be granted. It will be available to the customer right away.
If the selected membership type allows, the next step will be selecting the free secondaries. The user selected as the primary for this membership is not allowed to be selected as secondary as here.
If the selected membership allows and if all alloed free secondary spots have been taken (if any), the next step is to select the free secondaries. The user selected as the primary for this membership is not allowed to be selected as secondary as here.
In order to create the membership, a payment must be made. Payments
This section refers to adding secondaries to memberships that have secondaries and have not used all of them. For extending/adding time/renewing a membership, see renewing.
Astral gives you the option to add secondaries of any unexpired memberships.
Find a membership and click edit. Only secondaries can be changed on a membership.
This feature is useful if, for example, at the moment of a membership purchase, the primary selected no or not all secondaries they are allowed to have.
Remember that adding paid secondaries always requires a payment. Changes will not extend the period of the membership, only renewing will do that.
Membership renewals are subject to the following rules:
- Primaries cannot be changed
- Only an expired primary can be added as a secondary on another membership
- The minimum membership starting date for non-expired memberships is the the ending date of the current one plus one day
Go to Memberships, find the membership, click on it to go to details and click Renew. The rest of the process is very similar to creating.
A membership can be canceled. This might come handy if a previous primary wants to be a secondary in someone else's membership.
Go to membership details and click cancel membership.
Be careful! Canceling a current membership should only be done by customer request. Membership days are not transferable to other memberships.